A Wilderness City Park

View of hiking trail & Griffith Observatory, downtown Los Angeles in the distance. Photo by Brian Schmidt

Sprawled over 4,310 acres, for size alone L.A.’s Griffith Park tops other celebrated big-city parks in America. It is five times the size of New York’s Central Park, and four times as large as San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Situated on the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, Griffith Park is less tamed and more rugged than either of its famous big-city counterparts.

Although surrounded by civilization on all sides, Griffith Park is characterized as an urban wilderness.

The park’s history is somewhat exotic, and a bit sensational: an ostrich farm once occupied several hundred acres, and later the tycoon who donated the original parkland acreage to the city of Los Angeles was charged with attempted murder for shooting his wife. Further, the park’s ancestral lineage is long by California standards. Its southern boundary abuts the Los Feliz neighborhood, a name from 18th century California. In 1795, Spanish Governor Pedro Fages awarded a 6,647-acre land grant to José Vicente Feliz, a veteran of the famed Anza Expedition of 1776, and the current chief executive officer at El Pueblo de Los Angeles. The grant was named Rancho de Los Feliz.

No documentation of the Fages/Feliz grant remains, but in 1795 José Vicente Feliz was 54, considered one's sunset years in that era. Spain awarded few grants, but did reward some of its retiring soldiers with land—not outright gifts in fee simple as did its successor, Mexico—but more like lifetime leases. Nevertheless, more than one generation of the Feliz family occupied the property. The Los Feliz Adobe, built in the 1830s, still stands in the park. In 1843, Mexican Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted the rancho to Maria Ygnacia Verdugo, the widow of one of the Feliz family grandsons, and her son, José Antonio Feliz. Following the American acquisition of California, this grant was confirmed; but after the deaths of Maria and her son Antonio, unrelated parties held ownership for a number of years.

Then in 1882, Griffith J. Griffith purchased 4,071 acres of Rancho Los Feliz, a property wags claimed was haunted by the ghost of Antonio Feliz. Griffith was a wealthy man, having amassed a significant fortune as a mining expert. Relocating from San Francisco to boomtown Los Angeles that same year, Griffith set about developing it as a working ranch.

Three years later he partnered with naturalist Charles Sketchley, allotting 680 acres to an ostrich farm in what today is the park’s Crystal Springs picnic area, birds that Sketchley had brought to southern California in 1883. Their plan was to capitalize on the vogue in women’s fashion for ostrich feathers in hats and boas, luxury accessories that fetched high prices. The strange-looking birds also created a bonus revenue stream: Tourism. At what amounted to the area’s first amusement park, locals paid admission to gawk at the flock. In 1886 investors built the Ostrich Farm Railway to transport tourists back and forth from central Los Angeles, with, at one point, five trains a day steaming into the farm’s depot. Due to unspecified financial difficulties, the ostrich farm closed in 1889.

But Griffith became even wealthier in 1887, when he married. He was 37 and the bride was 23-year old, ultra-rich heiress Tina Mesmer. Nine years later, the couple presented the city of Los Angeles with what they called a “Christmas present” on December 16, 1996—an astounding 3,015 acres of Rancho Los Feliz, to be used only as a public park. The city, of course, hastened to name it in his honor. Newspapers praised Griffith’s “princely gift,” but fellow social elites intensely disliked him for his pompous egocentricities . . . and that was before he shot his wife.  

The shooting occurred in 1903, while the couple was vacationing in Santa Monica. Heretofore unknown to the public, Griffith was a secret drunk who became deranged under the influence. Blitzed on September 3 and deluded that his wife was plotting to kill him, he shot her in the head. The bullet passed through her left eye; amazingly, she escaped him by throwing herself out the window of their prestigious hotel. Her arm was broken, and she lost the eye. He was arrested. Charged with attempted murder, he was convicted on a lesser charge of assault with a deadly weapon, and served 21 months in San Quentin. Tina was granted a speedy divorce.

Griffith was released in December 1906, finally sober, still rich, and determined to improve his image. In 1912 He offered another gift, an amphitheater and a science building, to be built inside Griffith Park, at his expense. Because of his unsavory reputation, city authorities declined the overture. In the end, though, he got his way. Upon his death on July 6, 1919, the bulk of his estate was left to the city in trust, earmarked for the projects he desired. The Greek Theatre was completed in 1929; and the Griffith Observatory in 1935. 

Subsequent additions from multiple sources have expanded Griffith Park’s original 3,015 acres to its present size. Much of it comprises rough natural terrain intersected with back-country hiking and equestrian trails, but it has many other attractions. Besides the Greek Theater and the observatory, there are museums, golf courses, concessions, picnic areas, caves, the Los Angeles Zoo, and the world-famous Hollywood sign on Mt. Lee.

Although few remember him nowadays, a 14-foot bronze statue of Griffith Jennings Griffith, created by Johnathan Bickart, was unveiled in 1996 at the main entrance on Crystal Springs Drive. The Los Feliz Adobe, the 1830s home of Antonio Feliz, serves as headquarters for the park rangers.