There’s No Place Like Home, Even ‘Poor Man’s Bel-Air’

Despite fire, flood and earthquake, Los Angeles remains a garden of great variety for those who would explore it.

It is often characterized by Eastern journalists as a desert, although in fact it is a veritable forest. Pasadena’s jacarandas, for example, have recently been in full bloom, giving many of its streets a purple umbrella. Recently my wife and I went down to Palm Springs by bus; not having to drive, I took note of the neighborhoods we passed. Even the new housing tracts were surrounded by jungles.

Los Angeles and its environs encompass thousands of historic places, museums, gardens, storied houses, pleasure parks, campuses, trails and other attractions open to the visitor.

Two recent books do a heroic job of cataloguing these wonders, many of them unknown to the general public. “A Guide to Historical Outings in Southern California,” by Gloria Ricci Lothrop, is exhaustive in its listings, with explicit directions to goals as far apart as Olvera Street and the Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo and the Big Red Car museum in Perris and the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica. Lothrop tells you where to eat and drink and what numbers to call for special services.

In “Walk Los Angeles: Adventures on the Urban Edge,” John McKinney guides us to hiking trails from the Hollywood Hills to the Santa Susanas. All you need, he says, are “endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence. . . .”

Despite my unfailing good humor, to which my wife will testify, I am intimidated by the thought of climbing to Grizzly Flat in the San Gabriels, or to Saddle Peak in the Santa Monicas.

McKinney also describes hiking trails in the urban area, among them my own hill, Mt. Washington, which he generously titles “the Jack Smith Trail.” Pleased as I am by the notice, I must confess that it’s a trail I haven’t climbed since we moved into our house more than 40 years ago. My wife recalls that before she learned to drive, she climbed our hill once with two armfuls of groceries, a trek that left her exhausted and trembling.

McKinney notes that Mt. Washington has been called “the poor man’s Bel-Air,” a name that more accurately describes its residents than its general ambience. True, it was long overlooked in the rush to the suburbs and retains much of its early bucolic charm. Although they are gradually vanishing, we still see raccoons, opossums, foxes, skunks, squirrels, coyotes and tarantulas.

McKinney recommends climbing the steps that lead from West Avenue 43 and continuing up Canyon Vista Drive, along what once was the route of the Mt. Washington railway. (You can see the station at the bottom of the hill, now used as an apartment.)

The funicular railway’s two cars, the Virginia and the Florence, climbed to the top of the hill to the Mt. Washington Hotel. Built in 1908, the hotel was much favored by movie stars for weekend assignations. For a short time during World War I, it served as a hospital for wounded veterans. Restored in 1925 by Swami Paramahansa Yogananda and sumptuously furnished with Indian objets d’art, the hotel is now the world headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship. Every year at Christmas, they play carols that roll down the hill through our house.

When we moved into our house in 1950, sections of the old railway tracks were still in place. Our sons used to play along them. Since then the fellowship has built a women’s residence (I call it a nunnery), and one may often see its sari-clad residents strolling through the gardens. Several of them used to haul the fellowship’s trash cans down to a gate across the street from our house, but I haven’t seen that lovely phenomenon in some time.

Beyond the fellowship is the Mt. Washington Elementary School, which our sons attended. From here one can follow a maze of drives that eventually lead down the hill to the Southwest Museum, a towering Spanish castle-like structure that can be seen from the Pasadena Freeway and serves to locate Mt. Washington for motorists.

The museum, founded in 1912 by Charles Lummis, the city’s first librarian and first city editor of The Times, contains perhaps the nation’s finest collection of Southwestern Indian art. Entrance is through a tunnel whose dark walls are alight with dioramas of Indian life. When I was a boy living in Highland Park, I made many trips to the museum just to walk through that magic tunnel.

Much of our view has been obliterated in recent years by neighbors’ trees, but we can still see the downtown skyline from the window over the kitchen sink. It’s not Bel-Air, but it’s home.