For Old-Timers, Any Price Is a Bargain for the Eagle Rock

The health system is being gutted, schools are crumbling, thousands of public-sector workers are facing layoffs and still, somehow, the city of Los Angeles has tapped state and county funds to help buy a $700,000 rock.

As its price tag suggests, the Eagle Rock--the namesake of the northeast Los Angeles community where it sits--is more to its neighbors than a geological wonder. It is their home’s totem.

In a time of fiscal crisis and increasing urban ills, some residents think the amount the city paid to a developer who had visions of an apartment complex near the rock was simply too high.

But many others, especially Eagle Rock old-timers, say that when you’re talking about preserving a piece of Los Angeles history and a symbol of a neighborhood’s perseverance, no price is too steep. “We have a monument that identifies us,” said Shirley Minser, a 40-year resident of Eagle Rock. “The Eagle Rock to this community is like Mt. Rushmore is to South Dakota.”

The monument, which sits alongside the Ventura Freeway between Glendale and Pasadena, is a geological oddity--so much so that the eagle adorning its flat side seems as much an optical illusion as a natural wonder.

Discerning it can be a trick; look at the community symbol the wrong way and the Eagle Rock would be nothing but a hunk of brown, dry stone.

But the right frame of mind--and often the right time of day, with a shadow helping to outline the bird’s shape--reveals a glorious vision of the national bird.

With its beak pointing straight out of the rock and its wings stretching their full span, the bird seems within a wing’s flap of flying off the rock face and taking to the sky. Like any good optical game, the eagle once identified does not again blend in with its brown rock host.

And like any good symbol, the rock is rich with local lore.

Native Americans are believed to have used the rock as a natural fortress, observing the settlers below from the rock’s safe positions.

Spanish settlers named the mound “Piedra Gorda,” or “fat rock.” By the mid-1880s, it was known by its present name, although historians disagree about who christened it.

In 1874, the infamous bandit Tiburcio Vasquez is believed to have hidden out there while lying in wait for a local man he was planning to rob.

Later, a drunken French beekeeper was said to have taken up residence in one of the rock’s two caves. The other cave housed his bees, whose bounty he hauled into town on a mule and sold to purchase spirits.

“The residents knew that if that mule didn’t make the run for a couple of days . . . he was having some headaches up there,” said Jim Beckham, president of the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce. “I think that’s my favorite story. There was really someone living there.”

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There were also, of course, tales of buried treasures, prompting teams of scavengers to unsuccessfully dig around the rock, looking for riches.

Although Eagle Rock was incorporated in 1911, by 1923, water supplies were increasingly inadequate for the burgeoning community, and it agreed to be annexed by the city of Los Angeles.

But the neighborhood held fast to its identity and the symbol that marked it.

In the 1920s, a streetcar line to the rock made it easier for Angelenos to take advantage of church and club picnics held at the Eagle Rock Park below the monument.

Easter sunrise services were also held on the rock; trumpets heralded the sunrise as worshipers gathered atop the mound.

In the 1950s, Beckham said, local teen-agers held sleep-outs in and around the rock. A ladder from the lower cave to the upper cave facilitated their exploration.

But it was not until the rock was threatened that it fulfilled its most important recent role: Uniting the residents of a unique and ethnically diverse enclave of 25,000 to 30,000 people. And people from many groups within the community turned out to help save the rock from developer Frederic A. Heim, who owned 2 1/2 acres of surrounding land.

In the late 1980s, when Heim proposed building an apartment complex at the foot of the rock, residents responded by forming a group dedicated to buying the land.

Members of the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce and local scouting troops organized a 1988 pancake breakfast at the rock that contributed to a $10,000 fund aimed at showing the City Council the level of the residents’ commitment.

“It pulled us all together,” Beckham said.

In the end, the council paid $699,000 to settle a suit that Heim filed when he and the city failed to reach an agreement about how much it would pay him to condemn the property under the rules of eminent domain. Los Angeles now owns both the rock and the land surrounding it.

For residents, the City Council action was a sweet one.

“Hollywood has its sign,” said Rebecca Lopez, 20. “Now we have our Eagle Rock.”