Los Angeles River - History

History

The river provided a source of water and food for the Gabrielino Indians prior to the arrival of the Spanish. The Gabrielinos were hunters and gatherers who lived primarily off fish, small mammals, and the acorns from the abundant oak trees along the river's path. There were at least 45 Gabrielino villages located near the Los Angeles River, concentrated in the San Fernando Valley and the Elysian Valley, in what is present day Glendale. In 1769, Gaspar de Portolà, during his 1769 expedition of Alta California, named it El Río de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Ángeles de Porciúncula, translated as, The River of Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula. It was thus referred to as the Porciuncula River.

The river was originally an alluvial river that ran freely across a flood plain that is now occupied by Los Angeles, Long Beach, and other townships in Southern California. Its path was unstable and unpredictable, and the mouth of the river moved frequently from one place to another between Long Beach and Ballona Creek. In the early nineteenth century, the river turned southwest after leaving the Glendale Narrows, where it joined Ballona Creek and discharged into Santa Monica Bay in present Marina del Rey. During a catastrophic flash flood in 1825, its course was diverted again to its present one, flowing due south just east of present-day downtown Los Angeles and discharging into San Pedro Bay. (Prior to the Great Flood of 1862, it was joined by the San Gabriel River in present-day Long Beach, but in that year the San Gabriel carved out a new course 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east, and has discharged into Alamitos Bay ever since.)

Until the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Los Angeles River was the primary water source for the Los Angeles Basin, but much of its channel had extremely low discharge except during the winter rains. Unpredictable and devastating floods continued to plague it well into the 1930s (the most notable one being the catastrophic 1938 flood that precipitated the recall of then-mayor of Los Angeles Frank L. Shaw), leading to calls for flood control measures. The Army Corps of Engineers duly began an ambitious project of completely encasing the river's bed and banks in concrete, with only a trickle of water usually flowing down its middle. Ever since, it has served primarily as a flood control channel, fed by storm drains. The only portions of the river that are not completely paved over are in the flood-control basin behind the Sepulveda Dam near Van Nuys; a 3-mile (5-km) stretch east of Griffith Park known as the Glendale Narrows; and along its last few miles in Long Beach.