Eagle Rock

Re “For Old-Timers, Any Price Is a Bargain for the Eagle Rock,” Sept. 9:

While growing up in the Los Angeles area, I always had trouble seeing the eagle in Eagle Rock. If anything the erosion in the rock looked to me more like an owl than an eagle. But of course for a kid in the back seat of a 1929 Essex to see anything at all was an accomplishment.

In recent years the view from the freeway going east, when the shadows are just right, most definitely defines a bird--but not an eagle. Today it looks even more like an owl to me than it did in the 1930s.

Owl or eagle, whichever--long live Eagle Rock.

WAYNE A. MILLER

Pasadena

* Apparently stalled in a horse-and-buggy jam near what is now the eastbound Ventura Freeway’s Figueroa off-ramp, a Times reader did a quick calculation and sent this bit of trivia to the editor on Dec. 5, 1886:

“To set at rest all further guessing, Eagle Rock, from which the valley derives its name, has been approximately measured. It stands 132 feet high from base. Circumference at base, 553 feet. Will some ready reckoner among your readers tell us how many Nadeau blocks and Raymond hotels could be comfortably stowed away inside?”

If only another correspondent had told us how big a Nadeau block or the Raymond Hotel was, one of today’s commuters, caught in that same traffic crunch, would no doubt oblige.

RALPH E. SHAFFER

Professor Emeritus, History

Cal Poly Pomona

*

* I couldn’t believe the convoluted way you describe trying to find an eagle in the spot on the upper-right side of the rock face. You make it sound like a Rorschach test. The truth is that the entire rock face--all of it--is an eagle’s head.

The eagle is facing left, with its beak curving down around the arched cave on the left side of the base. The rest of the base, to the right of the cave, is the eagle’s neck. The spot you made so much of is the eagle’s eye.

JANE RUMPH

Pasadena