The Los Angeles River near present-day Griffith Park, 1800
Photograph from Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, published in Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River
PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBILITIES
1800s
The natural, indigenous state of the Los Angeles River oscillated between two conditions. During the dry season, the source of the river was the underground reservoirs of the San Fernando Valley aquifers, forced to the surface by the northern base of the Santa Monica Mountains. Nonetheless, the sandy soils of the region absorbed much of the river's flow and it frequently ran underground. In the winter, storm runoff from the mountains sent violent flood waters into the river. Because the dry season flow of the river was too meager to carve out a permanent channel, the winter storms spread the river across the coastal plains, seeking a new course to the ocean each year. Consequently, the natural course of the Los Angeles River intertwined and mingled with the San Gabriel River and Ballona Creek, and the floodplain covered nearly half of the watershed's non-mountainous area. This unpredictability was of course acceptable, since despite the presence of various Indian villages, the San Fernando and San Gabriel Missions, and the Los Angeles Pueblo, prior to the late nineteenth century the watershed was essentially unsettled.