Griffith Park : A Look at the Park Today . . .

Griffith Park is a recreational expanse spread across mountain, canyon and meadow and ranging in altitude from 325 feet to 1,625 feet atop Mt. Hollywood, from which on a clear day you really can see to Catalina--and beyond.

Even during times of fog and smog, downtown Los Angeles shimmers like a fantasy below and to the southwest of the mountain, the highest point in this unique urban oasis that many of us are inclined to take for granted.

Residents of the city and its environs accept the park’s presence unthinkingly as they rocket their motorcars along the adjacent freeways and past the fine homes of Los Feliz Boulevard. But to a stranger, say, a tourist from another city, coming upon it for the first time, the park is an unfailing astonishment because of its rusticity, vastness--and stunning diversity.

Such a visitor encounters contrasting scenes that range from haunting wilderness landscapes to tableaux as civilized as the cocktail hour in the sporty golf clubhouse.

“We provide the grass and the people do their own thing. That’s what’s unique about Griffith Park,” said senior park ranger Dave Gonzales.

“It’s so large and has so many people doing so many different things. Like the hikers climb up to Dante’s View or Captain’s Roost--and that’s their world. They don’t know or care what’s happening on the golf course or the picnic grounds. While the ten-speeders down below never notice the hikers.”

In many respects, Griffith Park is a metaphor for the vast and diverse city that it serves. As is true elsewhere in Los Angeles, languages other than English are heard more and more on the park’s playing fields and in its glens. The homeless find in it quiet places to camp out. And the city’s many unconnected segments of population are reflected in the complexions and recreational habits of visitors to the park.

All institutions fall on hard times, and the park has been no exception, as city officials are the first to admit. The almost simultaneous passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 and the elimination of the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act program cut deeply into manpower.

“People are tired of hearing that excuse and I don’t want to hide behind it,” said James Hadaway, general manager of the city Recreation and Parks Department. “But the truth is that for several years trails were not maintained as well and brush and fire crews were not getting their maintenance done.”

But recently maintenance has taken an upturn, Hadaway said, and several sprucing-up programs began. “We hit rock bottom a year ago,” he said. “Now the city is putting more money in the department’s budget and next year looks even better.” And crime has declined after a recent spurt.

Even though Griffith Park attracts hordes of visitors--upward of 10 million each year--the vast majority are casual callers.

They go to golf or to play tennis or to picnic. To lift a child or a grandchild onto the carrousel, a pony ride, the miniature train. To hike the mountain trails. To jog. To bike. Or even to play the bongo drums on Sunday.

They visit to gawk at the animals in the zoo or to marvel at dazzling observatory shows. Or merely to loll in the sun at the entrance to leafy Fern Dell, only a stroll from Hollywood’s tacky pornography joints and fast-food jumble.

This casual attitude of the majority, however, does not diminish the park. Quite the contrary. It validates the 4,107-acre expanse of natural beauty and man-made prettifying for what it is: a municipal treasure that offers something for everyone.

Even at its busiest times, the park offers regions of solitude for those who would retreat from the clamor of big city life. The park is simply so big, said one horseman, that “you can ride all day and not pass the same place twice.”

It is, in fact, the biggest municipal park in the United States entirely surrounded by an urban environment. Phoenix has one which covers a larger land mass, but it is bordered on three sides by desert.

Five parks the size of Manhattan’s Central Park, probably the nation’s most romanticized municipal common, would be needed to equal its Los Angeles counterpart. But more than size marks the differences between the two parks a continent apart, which celebrate hugely dissimilar metropolises.

Central was created by man in its entirety; Griffith was ther e. Except for some gentle sloping, Central Park is almost entirely flat. Practically every one of its hundreds of thousands of trees and bushes was planted. Dozens of entrances provide New Yorkers with quick access to the park by foot.

The Griffith Park terrain, by contrast, is a a jumble of topography, ranging from emerald lawn to rugged forest. Its flora is largely native, unlike much of the plant life elsewhere in the city. Only nine entrances serve it, so that most who visit the park arrive by auto, bus, bicycle or horse--one exception being bedraggled transients who sneak in at night to sleep.

But Griffith Park’s identity is as deliberate in its own way as Central Park’s. Historically, a conscious effort has been made to keep it Arcadian. Richard Ginevan, the park’s chief supervisor, calls the park “a passive recreational facility. We like to keep it as natural as possible.” Comparatively little of the activity in the park is scheduled formally.

Said general manager Hadaway: “We get a proposal a week from someone wanting to put something new in the park, from a Shakespearean Theater to a Museum of Science and Industry. Every week. That’s not what the park is supposed to be about.”

Only 20% of the park bears the mark of the landscaper or builder, the remainder existing virtually as it did when Col. Griffith Jenkins Griffith, a wealthy Welsh-born immigrant given to sybaritic tastes and an intemperate disposition, offered the land to the city as a Christmas gift almost 90 years ago with this injunction:

“To be used as a public park for the purposes of recreation, health and pleasure, for the use and benefit of the citizens of the City of Los Angeles forever.”

He also stipulated that the park--real estate that Hadaway estimates is worth $2 billion today--should bear his name.

Since then, although one of the world’s great megalopolises has grown up and surrounded it and tides of humanity have surged up to, around and beyond it, the park has remained radically unaffected, its personality essentially intact.

Retains Wooded Character

Apart from its highly developed attractions--the golf courses, tennis courts, picnic grounds, observatory and concessions--the park remains determinedly primal, even to the extent of remaining a habitat of the same wild animals that have roamed there for centuries.

Well, almost. The erstwhile king of what is now the park, the grizzly bear, the same beast that graces the state seal, forages there no more.

“We know most of the trees by their first names--and some by their last,” said Paul Richel, a 64-year-old long distance runner who works out almost daily up and down the park’s winding trails and along its flatlands. He speaks for the true appreciators of Griffith Park, a minority among the great mass of Angelenos.

All manner of small beasts and birds inhabit the park, and deer still rove the high ground and sometimes are seen in early mornings on the golf links, although the herds have been thinned by marauding coyotes and occasional packs of wild dogs.

Many a Bird

The number of flying objects that flit in and out is dizzying. A sharp-eyed bird watcher could catalogue well over 100 varieties during the course of a year, including the brown towhee, the Chinese spotted dove, the valley quail (the state bird), the ash-throated flycatcher, the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and even an occasional California black-chinned sparrow.

“We’ve also seen mountain lion tracks,” said Sheldon Jensen, a Recreation and Parks Department assistant general manager who is directly responsible for the park’s operation. One day 20 years ago, a heavyweight boxing contender, doing roadwork just before dawn, reported coming across a big cat gnawing on the remains of a freshly killed deer. The boxer vowed that thereafter he would work out in the park only in broad daylight.

Most of today’s park trails--and there are 53 miles of them, 43 of which can be negotiated by horse as well as hiker--follow the paths stamped out originally by wild animals. Their maintainence demands the constant attendance of work crews, who are sometimes too busy with other duties to keep them as clean as the fastidious might wish.

Mixed Bouquet of Plants

The park’s trees and plant life constitute a wildly mixed bouquet. William Eckert, a retired ranger who returns regularly to the park to lead nature hikes, spent years cataloguing this growth. Eckert identified 103 kinds of trees, 46 shrubs, 51 grasses and weeds, 7 ground covers, 7 poisonous plants, 11 parasitic plants and vines, 36 wildflowers and 30 herbaceous plants.

He said at least 85% of that growth is indigenous. Some of the most visible--the towering redwoods, pines and eucalyptuses--is not.

Griffith gardeners constantly water, prune and plant. “Nothing takes care of itself in this park,” Ginevan said. Well, not quite: Mountainside chaparral thrives unattended.

Maree Field, a 43-year-old marathoner who trains almost daily in the park, took note of the prevalence of eucalyptus trees, saying, “The reason I love running here is because I’m from Australia and many parts of the park remind me of Australia. Especially where there are large groves of eucalyptus. And just the wildness of the place.”

Plenty of Sports

Athletics--as practiced either with the dedication of runners such as Field or with fitful enthusiasm by the multitudes--has been synonymous with the park ever since the first baseball was thrown, the first golf ball struck.

During the Olympics, long distance runners from throughout the world worked out there. Soccer games, with the increasing arrival of immigrants from nations where that sport is the preference, have become a popular park pastime.

But when one thinks of sport in Griffith Park, golf and tennis are what automatically come to mind because of the popular sites for both games that have existed for nearly 70 years.

Contained within park boundaries are two 18-hole golf courses and two 9-hole courses. While some golfers complain about the maintenance of the championship courses, the links are considered the equal of most private ones in the nation.

Said Marty Tregnan, president of the Los Angeles Municipal Golf Assn., “If you give golfers a pool table top to putt on, they’ll claim it’s uneven.” During the last three years, he noted, the links have undergone a round of improvements to spruce them up.

Tougher Golf Course

In the process of toughening the par-71 course, No. 7 was turned into a water hole last year. After four months of play, Tom Barber, Griffith’s pro along with his father, Jerry, contracted with a scuba diver to retrieve balls lost in the lake at 10 cents apiece. The diver came up with 1,800, which are still being sold in the pro shop.

But as popular as the links and the 28 tennis courts are, the park’s major attractions are the 113-acre zoo and the copper-domed observatory, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month.

From the start, according to Susan Injejikian, the facility’s historian, the telescope atop the observatory never was intended as a major scientific tool but rather as something “for the enjoyment of the public.” Even 50 years ago, she explained, “the skies were so washed out here at night by the lights from the city” that it was never an effective research instrument.

The zoo is described by Robert Wagner, executive director of the Wheeling, W. Va.-based American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, as “not only one of the leading zoological institutions in the United States but, indeed, one of the best in the world.” The Los Angeles Zoo, he said, excels particularly in propagating animals in captivity, in its educational program and in its cleanliness. Zoo keepers tend to 2,000 animals representing some 500 species.

Boo From the Zoo

It is axiomatic among golfers that when playing the course, they can tell with their eyes shut when they are approaching the 18th green because of the rush of animal sounds that mock the duffer.

Other noises appeal to different multitudes. The greatest smash hit at the 6,000-seat Greek Theater, park officials say, was a sold-out, seven-day Neil Diamond run in 1972. “It made him a superstar,” according to Ginevan, who said the theater’s most durable attraction is Harry Belafonte, who has been performing there for 30 years.

The Greek’s season, from May to October, can be difficult for the thin brown-uniformed line of park rangers whose responsibility, among a myriad others, is to see to it that the park, which opens at 6 a.m. daily, is vacated by 10:30.

“Sometimes we don’t get everybody out of the park until 1 or 2 in the morning,” said Jess Munoz, a ranger who works at night. “Those who follow the punk rockers are the worst to get out.”

Places to Hide In

To completely vacate the park is an impossibility. “There are so many areas a person can hide,” Munoz said. The most persevering are the down-and-out who have no place else to sleep. A night-shift ranger said he “guesses” as many as two dozen men and women may be found sleeping in the park on any given evening.

“We’re kind of caught in the middle,” said chief senior ranger Gonzales. “Our main concern is to protect park property and try to assist people. So we try to solve these problems with a low profile. Our parks are an escape for a lot of people with no place else to go.”

Of course, any time of night or day, said Munoz, “There are lovers all over the park.”

A couple’s absorption in one another remains undisturbed if it is discreet. If other park-goers find it offensive, rangers customarily caution the offenders that they may be subject to lewd conduct arrest by city police. The Fern Dell area and the grassland at the entrance to it off Los Feliz Boulevard, rangers said, is the principal park rendezvous for homosexuals drawn there in increasing numbers in recent years.

Keeping a Low Profile

Their low-profile stance follows the rangers’ normal pattern of conduct when they run into a situation that they can’t control, since they are not law enforcement officers.

The park is not always a peaceable kingdom; it invites certain types of crimes, especially vandalism, car theft and just plain orneriness, usually inspired by drugs or drink.

From time to time, groups of park users and nearby residents become upset by disorderliness. Recently such a situation has developed. Residents’ groups have appealed to the City Council to add more rangers (only 26 now patrol the entire city park system) and give them guns.

“Vandals and criminals have taken over and driven the rest out,” said Laurie Smith, head of the Coalition to Save Our Parks, which is leading the campaign. “The problem is there is zero authority presence now.”

Smith said she began working with other residents’ groups because of the vandalism she observed when she exercised in the park. Her frustration mounted, she said, after an elderly man pulled a gun on her husband while he was jogging in the park two years ago in a disreputable looking pair of “old sweats.” It turned out, she said, that the man with the gun carried it in the park “because he feared he would be attacked, as have so many of our senior citizens.”

Need More Officers

Hadaway said he too would like to see the ranger force strengthened. “But people mustn’t build hopes that adding 20 more rangers will solve all our problems,” he said.

Although a survey done two summers ago by his own department showed that 50% of those polled said they would use Los Angeles’ parks more if they were not afraid, Hadaway said he wonders how many people really avoid Griffith Park because of fear.

On the contrary, he said, “It seems to me the park has gotten more crowded. Despite the fears, greater numbers of people are using the park.”

Capt. Robert Taylor, commander of the Northeast Division, said that the park accounts for only a minimal amount of the crime in his division, and because of manpower limitations it “has a low policing priority.” In fact, he said, during the last quarter of 1984 “the total of 78 crimes in the park was among the lowest of any reporting district in the division.”

Conversely, however, auto thefts and burglaries from autos in the park “over a year are the highest of any other reporting division in my district,” Taylor added.

Park Crime Rate Rises

While park crimes jumped last year by 25% over 1983, they have decreased by 10% so far this year compared with the same period in 1984. “We’ve placed more emphasis on stopping that type of thing, put on more patrols,” Taylor said.

Some have suggested that crime is the price Los Angeles must pay for having a park in the heart of a city which itself has become less safe.

“We still see our nation’s parks like pictures from the 1890s, the ladies strolling in long dresses and carrying parasols,” Hadaway said. “But it’s simply not that way any more.”

Ranger Gonzalez said he saw a change developing in the park, which 20 years ago was the preserve of middle-class whites. Jensen, who agrees, said, “It started with the flower children enjoying nature and not destroying anything. Everything then was peace and love. But they attracted the hippies and the motorcycle gangs. The bad guys were preying on the good guys.”

With that, Gonzalez said, the white middle-class “just drifted away,” driven away by the alien culture it saw around it.”

“Every Sunday in the park you’d have a rock concert,” Jensen said. “People didn’t want to picnic here any more.”

Things Got Rowdy

Then in the mid-70s, Gonzalez said, the rock music stopped when as concerts got out of hand and led to clashes between police and young people. In time, the flower children, the hippies and the rowdies, he said, “left a void that quickly was filled by ethnic families. That began evolving about 10 years ago.”

As time passed, Gonzalez added, “More and more ethnics--mostly Latinos and Asians--have come to the park on weekends. Their hub is the merry-go round, the picnic areas, the little train and the pony rides. It’s how they show their kids a good time. They spend an entire day here.

“Today, the white middle-class uses the park mainly for jogging, bicycling, horseback riding, tennis and golf.”

A change there, perhaps, in a city landmark. But whoever said anything in Los Angeles stands still?

Tomorrow: A look at the park through the eyes of “the Park People.”