The Los Angeles River, 1938
Photograph from USC Regional History Collection, published in Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear
PAST, PRESENT, AND POSSIBILITIES
1930s
In 1930, the renowned landscape architecture firms Olmsted Brothers and Bartholomew Associates proposed over 200 miles of parkways and boulevards in Los Angeles. Located along rivers, and allowing room for their waters to spread, the parkways offered a comprehensive solution to flood threats, park shortages, and traffic congestion.
But the disastrous mudslides of 1934, memorialized by folk singer Woody Guthrie, joined unemployment as one Los Angeles' Depression-era afflictions. That year, the Army Corps of Engineers assumed responsibility for flood protection in the Los Angeles River basin. Initiating a 40-year construction project, the Corps' plan to line the river channels in concrete not only promised permanent flood control but would also employ thousands of people. Olmsted & Bartholomew's greenbelt scheme based on land acquisition and hazard zoning was quickly and quietly shelved.
If any doubts remained about the river's potential danger, the intense flooding of March 1938 validated the Army's purpose in Los Angeles.