Overlook Renamed for Environmentalist

For half her life, Studio City resident Nancy Hoover Pohl has fought to preserve Fryman Canyon as a scenic area where people surrounded by the vast concrete and steel city can go to enjoy a piece of the wilderness.

At Monday’s meeting of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Pohl, 83, was honored for those years of service with the passage of a resolution to rename an overlook on Mulholland Drive, between Skyline Drive and Allenwood Road, the “Nancy Hoover Pohl Overlook at Fryman Canyon.”

“When I first started, I saw nothing but change, and the change I didn’t like,” Pohl said. “Now children and adults can come up here and kind of recharge their batteries and be with the wildlife.”

Pohl has worked for more than 40 years to preserve the area below the overlook. A ground-breaking ceremony planned for 11 a.m. today will officially recognize the overlook in her name.

“She was one of the leaders when it wasn’t so fashionable to be an environmentalist in the city,” said Joseph Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy.

“When I was first involved, my hair was black and now it’s white,” Pohl said. “Nothing’s been easy or quick, but we have had a great many wins, and a few loses, over the years.”

Some of Pohl’s wins include leading the way in the 1971 defeat of a proposed freeway that would have run from Los Angeles International Airport to Palmdale Airport, bisecting Studio City and much of the area she has fought to preserve.

She was also instrumental in helping the conservancy acquire Fryman Canyon, first in 1981 when the state Legislature supplied the conservancy with enough money to buy a large portion of the land, and again in 1991 when the city and conservancy purchased a canyon area that had been slated for development, Edmiston said.

“No one does anything by themselves,” Pohl said. “Maybe I was the one who beat them over the head and got them going, but we’re a pretty good group--that’s been anyone who’s worked with me.”