Rio, bravo!

IT’S AN ODD SORT of feeling, as if a parallel universe had been plopped on top of the northeastern corner of Los Angeles. The hills of Elysian Park are over there on one side, right where they should be, with cars whizzing up and down the Golden State Freeway at their base. On the other side is the western slope of Mount Washington, with its charming houses and black walnut groves.

But in between, just off industrial San Fernando Road, where factories once lined up to dump effluent into the concrete channel called the Los Angeles River, where Union Pacific railcars coupled and uncoupled, where parallel rows of tracks and giant train machine shops filled every inch of flat space between the houses of Cypress Park and the river, there is now, somehow, a verdant valley.

And a park. A big one. Not one of those no-trespassing parks but inviting green fields -- most of them with real grass, one with artificial turf -- for soccer and baseball. At the edges are bright orange poppies and other native plants, and low ground meant to soak up water and provide a transition to wetlands. What was once part of Union Pacific’s Taylor Yards is now the 40-acre Rio de Los Angeles State Park, the latest gem in an emerald necklace of green space being strung together not on a concrete ditch but on what was, and is again, the Los Angeles River.

Part of the triumph of this park, which opened earlier this month with a throng of neighbors long hungry for a calm and safe place to walk, play and enjoy vistas that once were the sole property of railroad workers, is that it was shaped in part by the people who will use it most. A new community center is still under construction, but the run-through fountains are already delighting children as the spring temperatures heat up. The soccer fields are already filling up.

As nice as this shock of open space is, the one thing still missing from Rio Park is the rio, which lies a tantalizingly few hundred yards out of reach. City officials and river activists are trying to purchase the vacant shop buildings that separate the park from the river just beyond. Even if they get it, Metrolink tracks still break up the link between the people and their waterway.

But if neighbors, activists and politicians can find a way to turn rail yards into a new valley, there may be no limit to what they can accomplish.