That all changed this morning when his female mate returned his call with her own soft hoo-hoo hoooooo hoo-hoo.With her return it appears that order has been restored in Elysian Park…at least until next season. In other Elysian Park bird news, the LA Weekly celebrates the mystery of the Bird Man of Elysian Park.

Julie Rosen, artist and founding member of the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park succumb to cancer last week. Julie moved to San Francisco last year to be near her children due to her failing health. Her last among her many deeds for the Citizens Committee was spearheading the drive to install the new children’s play area at Stadium Way and Scott Avenue and another play area on Casanova Terrace on the east side of the Pasadena Freeway.

We’ve also just been informed of the death of longtime vocal activist Sue Nelson, reportedly after being struck while crossing Sunset Boulevard at McDuff. For Andrew Garsten’s Eulogy visit the Neighborhood Councils discussion group.

Incase you don’t receive your copy in the mail you can now read the Spring 2003 Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park newsletter online here (PDF). In this issue: The upcoming Fundraising Dinner, news about the funding of a new Elysian Park Master Plan, upcoming Walking Tours and Remembering Geneva Williams.

Highlights

• Popular with children
• Free transfer to and from the hotel
• Wheelchair access
• All admission prices included

Disneyland Park:
At Disneyland you’ll find over 60 attractions – more than ever before. Get ready for thrills and capstans on the biggest ride in 40 years, the Indiana Jones Adventure. It’s the most high-tech, adrenaline-pumping thrill on wheels! Plunge into the ocean on the all-new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. Join Marlin and Dory in a search through ancient underwater ruins and Volcanos on a search for little Nemo.

Embark on a journey through the happier place on Earth, with family-friendly rides like the Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion and the Jungle Cruise. And do not forget to meet those lovable Disney characters – Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and more.

Disney’s California Adventure:
Disney’s California Adventure is the new 55-acre (22-hectare) theme park located right next door to Disneyland. There are five themed lands to enjoy: Sunshine Plaza, Paradise Pier, Hollywood Pictures Backlot, Golden State and A Bugs Land.

Discover a world of bugs in the hilarious It’s Tough to Be a Bug! 3D movie, get ready for California Screamin ‘, a looping rollercoaster with plenty of “air-time’, and Soarin ‘over California, where you actually feel like you’re flying over some of the state’s greatest landmarks.

Downtown Disney:
This new entertainment, shopping and dining complex is located just outside the front gates to both theme parks. Here you will find 21 unique shops, live entertainment and an array of fine restaurants including Rainforest Cafe, ESPN Zone and the House of Blues.

Yet for all its beauty, Echo Park has not received the care it deserves. Plantings have been removed. Trash collects in the lake. The Boathouse has fallen into serious disrepair. When Echo Park Lake reached its 100 th birthday in 1995, no one even Bothered to celebrate.

Now, the Echo Park Historical Society has Embark on a strategy to preserve and restore Echo Park Lake. The first critical step is to make the lake a City of Los Angeles historic-cultural landmark, one that takes in so much that is special about the park — the Lotus bed, added in the 1920s, the Boathouse, built in 1932, and the Lady of the Lake, the Art Deco statue installed in 1934 and restored just a few years ago.

Echo Park Lake Designating a monument would protect it from the ill-advised development plans that seem to surface every few years. Monument status would also coincide nicely with the lake’s 110 th anniversary, an event being celebrated this year by the EPHS with monthly walking tours, promotional articles and a Historic Home Tour planned for November.

Unfortunately, preparing such a complex application monument for the city – and researching the lake’s many components – is beyond the EPHS’s volunteer efforts. The EPHS decided earlier this year to hire the firm respected Historic Resources Group, to assist it with the bureaucratic process. But that firm’s expertise costs money. So far, we have covered those costs through our year-round fund-raising efforts, membership dues from $ 3 to our walking tours.

The Los Angeles Canal Reservoir and Reservoir No. 4 Co. formed in 1868. The company obtained water by digging in the ditch that sent water flowing from the Los Angeles River – In the area now known as Los Feliz – along a zigzag path that Emptio into the reservoir. 

Los Angeles passed up on the chance to purchase the land around the lake. But by the late 1880s, Thomas Kelley – a carriage maker whose name was spelled with and without an “e” in various documents – purchased the property along with five other speculators.

Kelley subdivided the area into the Montana Tract, its listing lots for sale in an 1887 edition of the Los Angeles Times. In those years, Angelino Heights had just gone through its first major development boom, with cable cars sending prospective buyers from downtown Los Angeles west on Temple Street .

The notion of waterfront property must have Sounded very appealing to the half-dozen businessmen who owned the lakeside property. But they soon discovered that the city still held the right to overflow the reservoir by up to 40 feet – an option that, if exercise, would have rendered their land Worthless.

In those years, Reservoir No. 4 was held in check by a dam in the vicinity of Bellevue Avenue . From there, water traveled down the Mill Ditch Wooler to a mill near present-day Fifth and Figueroa Streets, not far from where Kelley lived.

Kelley petitioner to provide the city a quitclaim, essentially a land swap, converting the reservoir into a park lands and private residences. That request, and quite possibly a legal challenge, led to three years of debate by the parks commission, the city council and the greatest.

In 1891, the city’s health officer inspected the dam and determined that, if it were to hold a greater volume of water, would pose a danger to residents who lived south of Bellevue Avenue .

“The existence of this reservoir at its present site I consider a menace to the life of everyone living along the Arroyo de los Reyes,” according to his statement in the council’s minutes. “I have seen this so full reservoir during the rainy season that I feared the bank would give way.”

Two months later, city leaders struck a deal with the men who owned the land around the reservoir. Kelley and his associates – including William LeMoyne Wills, who like Kelley, would later serve on the school board – gave up 33 acres of land around the reservoir so that it could be used as a park.

In exchange, the city agreed not to overflow the reservoir land, making the remaining land held by Kelley and his associates – including the street that would soon become Sunset Boulevard – far more valuable.
When Mayor Henry Hazard in 1891 signed the paperwork allowing the park to be created, I Envision a grand boulevard on Alvarado Street that would transport residents from Westlake – now MacArthur Park – Park to Echo Lake and then northeast to Elysian Park.

“(O) pen a good drive into this park on a continuation of Alvarado Street passing Reservoir No. 4 and ornaments which should be few cities would have as fine a drive or one containing a greater variety of scenery, “said Hazard, in his message to the council.

The city began work landscaping the park in October 1892. By 1895, the park and accompanying Boathouse were completed.
But it did not exactly win rave reviews in a Times article published on Jan. 1, 1896, which said:
“There has perhaps been less talk, and other newspaper, about his park than about any other, and it does not seem, thus far in its existence, that it were worthy of much.”

Designed in the rustic style, one bridge pedestrians helped reach the island, while a second passed over the lake’s northwest corner, where the ditch water delivered from the Los Angeles River (now grow and lotus).

By 1899, city leaders were intent on adding even more green space, by extending the parkland south to Temple Street . Bounded by Temple on the south and Bellevue on the north, the area was completed by 1907, with an extensive network of playing fields and courts for tennis and croquet.

One year later, the Echo Playground had a beautiful one-story clubhouse that served many of the neighborhood’s needs. Built by the same firm that went on to design the Southwest Museum in Mt Washington, the clubhouse was only the second city’s recreation center, offering the neighborhood’s first lending library and numerous sports, music and civic activities.

Still, Echo Park residents remained unsatisfied. By 1912, there were already calls to replace the Victorian-style Boathouse. One resident complained about the peanut shells that littera the park grounds. Another voice outrage at the site of couples “Spooning.

Things got worse by late 19-teens. By then, motion picture companies on Allesandro Street – Now Glendale Boulevard – Had been using the park as a filming location. City leaders responded by barring Keystone Studios, home of the Keystone Kops, from shooting any of its comedies at the lake, on the grounds that too many flowers were being Trampled.

By 1920, many of the hills surrounding the lake were still Untouched. Farm houses lined the northern edge of the lake, while four-unit, Craftsman-style apartment flats ran up Echo Park Avenue and Alvarado Street . Kelley died in 1906, the same year he built a house for his sister at 1467 Echo Park Ave
Within a few years, Kelley’s heirs had sold off much of his land to Henry Christian Jensen, who built the Sunset at Sunset Pharmacy and Echo Park and the motion picture house known as the Globe Theater – now Guadalupana – at 1624 Sunset Boulevard.

Still, the biggest development boom in Echo Park ‘s history – one that would have serious consequences for the lake – was just a year or two away. Those changes would make the lake even more of a hub for the neighborhood.

In 1769, Gaspar de Portola and Father Juan Crespi camper on the river bank opposite Buena Vista Hill near the North Broadway Bridge entrance to Elysian Park. Yang Na-Indian villagers from the creeks of Solano Canyon and the current location of the Los Angeles Police Academy greet the Spaniards with native refreshments. 

In 1781, the Pueblo of Los Angeles was officially established by Spanish California Governor Felipe de Neve with the Royal Grant of 4 square Spanish leagues (translated into 28 square miles or about 17.000 acres) of Pueblo Lands. Of this public land grant, the approximately 575-acre Elysian Park is the last remaining large piece. All else has been auctioned off or given away. Los Angeles even had to buy back the site of the present City Hall.

One of the first American official acts was the Ord Survey of 1849 to record the boundaries of these Pueblo Lands so they could be auctioned to produce city revenue. Elysian Park was then known as Rock Quarry Hills MINED stone for the building in the area. But instead of being sold, the Rock Quarry Hills area were “reserved” for public purpose and withdrawn from public auction.

In 1886, the Mayor and City Council of Los Angeles dedicated the Rock Quarry Hills as a city park forever, and renamed it Elysian Park (Elysian is derived from the Greek word paradise). Subsequent city charters have dedicated protected park lands and their use for park purposes in perpetuity. 

These are rare charter provisions, as city charters go, parkland and have given a firm legal base protectors for organized support of dedicated park land in the City of Los Angeles. It is upon this legal basis that the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park’ve Fought for two decades to retain park lands for park purposes.

Every effort is being made to establish the historical significance of this public park in order to conserve it for future generations as a part of the Santa Monica Mountains system of urban open space vital to the survival of the human, animal and botanical denizens of these historic parklands.

Laveta Terrace Stairway:

A wide, elegant stairway with multiple landings that leads to a row of palm trees at the top of the hill. Located on Laveta Terrace, one block east of Echo Park Avenue, north of Sunset Blvd. 

Clinton Stairway:

Twin, stairways zig-zag up the Bluffs to the west of Echo Park Lake. Though the stairs are often Marre with tagging and graffiti, the climb to the top offers the best view of the lake and, on a clear day, the mountains and hills to the north. Located on Glendale Boulevard, north of the 101 Freeway.

Curran Stairway:

This shady stairway is often clogged with leaves but it offers glimpse of some charming cottages and gardens located along its steps. Located on Curran Street, one block east of  Echo Park Ave

Avalon Stairways:

Here are two stairs that extend east and west off at Echo Park Ave Avalon St. The western steps go up to well maintained but narrow stairway that runs along some restored homes and cottages. The eastern of the steps are no-frills variety but they switch back numerous times and at various angles up a steep hillside.

Stairways & Lucretia Delta:

The Delta stairways take you past a jungle of giant agave and up a hillside with some cute cottages, homes and canyon views. At the top of the hill, turn left and you will soon go down the narrow steps leading off Lucretia Avenue and through another of plant life and tangled glimpse of interesting, hillside homes. Located on Delta St., one block west of Echo Park Ave .

Under Simons’ watch CCSEP successfully Fought off encroachments such as oil fields, an airport, a convention center, condominiums and numerous other construction efforts that would have chipped away masses of the park. At about 550 acres, Elysian Park is unique in offering a real experience of the outdoors to hundreds of thousands of hikers, soccer players, bird-watchers, picnic-ers, Wanderers, dogs and the occasional horse. In its present, hard-won form, the park offers solitude, community and beauty to the entire surrounding area. Simons’ most significant loss was in a battle to halt the expansion of the police academy.

Like an earlier progressive neighborhood, Estelle Lawton Lindsay, Simons worked as a journalist before devoting herself full-time to political activities. Raised in Chicago , She traveled to Shanghai , Where she worked for a French news agency, and where she also met her husband, Frank Glass, who was an organizer for the Communist Party. She also worked in New York . Simons and Glass moved to Los Angeles in 1939, Simons and for a time worked as an editor and reporter for the California Eagle, the city’s famous African-American newspaper.

Today was the Picnic by the German club in Los Angeles Elysian Park in LA.Immediately after getting up I was in my third cheesecake, but this time with almost all German ingredients made. I personally found him not quite as tasty – but it has been completely eaten up! I also have a tortellini salad made.Towards 1:45 pm, we are losgefahren and were also about 2:30 pm in the park we found the marked space at once and drove a little further.There were car enthusiasts with their rigged cars assembled. Insanity, what car we got to see. And the guys were quite worth seeing – from the purely physical, we would at least 200 years in prison then.On the right Picknikplatz arrived – the park is very large – were all brought food to the tables made available. Sam, the organizer, then also ignited the barbecue and the “great feast” could begin. But actually it was less about eating than about new people and old friends to meet. Frank and Susanne were Nina and Malte it (by Frank, we have learned from this association) and also met Mikaela soon. Witzig was then that Frank, Susanne (Ostfriesland) and Mikaela (Friesland) after their acquaintance stated that they have common acquaintances in Germany. So small is the world!

To register Ecuadorans ballot must submit their passport or Ecuadorian. Is free and only Ecuadorian consulate staff is authorized to make this constitutional right for citizens who wish to exercise the privilege to vote and elect the President and Vice President of Ecuador in the next elections on October 15, 2006.

On Sunday March 26 from 11:00 AM. 6:00 PM. in addition to being registered, the Club Ambato Los Angeles held the fifth fiftieth Feast of Fruit and Flowers in Ambato, FFF, and the symbolism of his queen coronation 2006-2007 Alishia and I made the blessing of the fruit, flowers and bread; ecuavolley tournaments and forties, music, games and prizes, the traditional choice of King Feo, dance contest and games for children, with much joy and fun. There will be Ecuadorian cuisine as llapingachos, oven, fritters, roast beef, corn, pies, beans, mature, and casting morocho home.