Chavez Ravine

Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop sat on the ridges and in the hollows here: three mostly Mexican American neighborhoods of small houses and gardens, with a church, a grocery and an elementary school, settled by families that redlining kept out of most of the city. On July 24, 1950 every household got a letter from the city housing authority. A public housing development would be built on the site, the house they lived in was included, and they would have the first chance to move back. Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander drew Elysian Park Heights, two dozen thirteen-storey towers and 163 low-rises, and the authority bought and condemned the ravine house by house.

The housing died in a courtroom and a campaign. In August 1952 Frank Wilkinson, the authority's champion of the project, was on the stand in a Chavez Ravine condemnation case when a landlords' lawyer, working from a dossier supplied by the police chief, demanded every organization he had ever joined. He refused, and was fired. Norris Poulson won the mayoralty in 1953 running against public housing, and the project was cancelled. The city took over the cleared land on condition it serve a public purpose, and in October 1957 the council traded 315 acres of it to the Brooklyn Dodgers for Wrigley Field. Voters confirmed the deal on June 3, 1958, by 25,785 votes.

A few families never left. On May 8, 1959 sheriff's deputies carried Aurora Vargas out of her parents' house in front of news cameras while her mother, Avrana Arechiga, threw stones, and a bulldozer flattened the house behind them. Dodger Stadium opened on April 10, 1962. The neighborhoods lie under its parking lots and its outfield. Route 66 ran through the Figueroa Street Tunnels, cut through these same hills, until 1964.