It once stood as a lookout point...

It once stood as a lookout point that protected the fledgling settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles. But that was before they put the gallows there. And the cemetery.

The gallows were virtually new in 1857, when more than 3,000 people stood on the hill to watch vigilantes lynch Juan Flores, a bandit who operated out of San Juan Capistrano.

A decade earlier, a military fort under construction on the hill had been named for Army Capt. Benjamin Moore, who had taken a lance through the heart at the battle of San Pasqual in San Diego County during the Mexican-American War. Since then, the downtown site overlooking Sunset Boulevard from Grand Avenue has been known as Ft. Moore Hill. It once extended far beyond its present perimeter, sloping as far south as 1st Street.

On July 4, 1847, the first U.S. flag was raised over the uncompleted fort. It stood for 30 years, but was never finished because the volunteer Mormon Battalion that built it was mustered out of the service.

One of Los Angeles’ first two cemeteries sat between crests on the hill, perhaps inspiring the Spanish name for the place--Canada de Los Muertos, or Ravine of the Dead.

Some of Los Angeles’ wealthy families lived on the hill.. Games of chance became popular pastimes at parties held in some of the fanciest homes.

Reading, writing and arithmetic came to Ft. Moore Hill in 1887, with the building of Central High School, later Central Junior High.

By 1901, the fort was gone, the gallows had vanished, and the city started to build the concrete and brick Broadway Tunnel through the hill. Ten years later, construction began on the Pacific Electric tunnel that carried the old Red Cars through the hill between Hill Street and Grand Avenue.

As the city expanded westward, the hill began to lose prominence. Still, it was a place where commuters could park their cars for a nickel. After dark, lovers parked beneath the pepper trees.

In 1933, Ft. Moore Hill bounced back into the public eye with persistent word that thousands of dollars in Spanish gold was buried beneath its dusty crust.

City officials struck a bargain with treasure hunters--a 50-50 split of whatever they found. Spurred on by dreams of wealth, the would-be gold diggers wound up with little more than their own rivulets of sweat dripping from their brows and seeping into the hill.

Reluctant to go away empty-handed, city officials tried to auction the 230,000 cubic yards of dirt shoveled out of the hill. A dirt-cheap bid of $11 came from a cynical fellow who clearly wanted cheap dirt. But that was not enough for the city fathers, who ordered that the dirt be carted off and dumped where Union Station now stands.

In 1941, the hill was divided to make room for the county courthouse at Hill and 1st streets, built at a cost of $2 million. Five years later, the 700 Central Junior High students said their goodbys and the school board moved into the red brick schoolhouse.

But more changes were still to come. The Broadway Tunnel was removed in 1944 to make way for the Hollywood Freeway. Most of the 1.4 million cubic yards of dirt excavated in the process was used to create an instant mini-mountain, covered with trees and shrubs, in Elysian Park.

Today, the two-story red brick schoolhouse is the meeting room for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. The school board parking lot now covers what was once the cemetery, but a handful of old-timers can remember the tombs behind the boys’ gym.

In 1967, part of the Pacific Electric Tunnel was removed to allow expansion of the school district building. About 100 yards of the tunnel still remain and are used as a depository for school board records.

On Hill, just north of Temple Street, what once was a waterfall cascading from the hill’s crest is high and dry--a victim of the energy crisis and government economies. At the base of the old falls, though, interested passersby can find the Ft. Moore Pioneer Memorial Monument, a tribute to what gave the hill its name.