Fairfax High School - Colonial Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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ilfnremnrh R. G. VAN CLEVE, Prinripal LA BREA BEDS Turn back in your geography to one of its earlier pages, written perhaps a million and a half or two million years ago. Locate the site now occupied by Los Angeles, particularly the western portion of the city. Here you will find a tropical plain sloping down from the not distant mountains to the sea, whose shore lies some- where near the Western side of Catalina extending northward along the line of the other channel islands. Heavy tropical growth covers all this region now occupied by our school, and great herds of camels, oxen, horses, giant sloths and other grass- eating animals find abundant food and shelter from the heat of day. Uf course, where there are such numbers of grass eaters, the flesh eaters are also abundant, and during the early hours of twilight the roar of the lion and the scream of the tiger break the serenity of the brooding air. ' Y VVinding through this jungle are numerous streams which widen out here and there into small lakes. Hither the animals come to quench their thirst and immerse their bodies in the cool depths. One such pool, La Brea Beds, has collected over a mass of soft, sticky asphaltum. lf an animal wades into this pool, it is immediately caught in the asphaltum and held in its vise-like grip until it perishes. Picture, then,

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a camel or a sloth caught in this treacherous trap. It sends forth its piteous cries to its mates for help, becoming more and more terrified as it struggles only to send it deeper into the morass. Attracted by its cries, a lordly lion or a fierce tiger stealthily approaches, and with a mighty bound hurls itself upon its luckless victim. Its prey sways sideways and partially falls under the impact of the hurtling body, and the lion, in order to recover its balance, puts'-down one foot, only to find itself caught in the same relentless grasp. Slowly, slowiy the tarry mass yields to their combined weights, and finally both animals sink beneath the surface and are entombed in the nearly air-tight mass. Year after year this tragedy is re-enacted until the tarpit lake is well-nigh filled with bones. Now turn to the next page in your geography. You find nothing but a shallow, quiet sea over West and South Los Angeles. The shoreline is now cutting diagonally from northeast to southwest across the heart of the present business section. I have picked up shells and sharks' teeth forty feet below the surface of the ground at Fourth and Broadway and at Fifth and Hill, where they had been deposited on this old beach. What has happened to change the picture? The land in this vicinity began slowly to sink and lake, swamp and jungle were buried under the waves of the sea. Layer after layer of sand and clay were laid down during this period, which probably lasted four or five hundred thousand years. Again, turn to the next page and we find another changed scene. A slow, up- tipping movement has spilled off the water and the present coastal plain has been formed. A slow erosion of rain, running streams and wind again uncover the old tarpit, and the hustling American, seeking material to make his roofs water-tight and his roadbeds more firm, uncovers and brings to our ken this record of past events. But I have gotten somewhat ahead of my story. By reason of a lowering of the mountains in the back country, the rainfall became less and less, and consequently the tropical vegetation disappeared. With a loss of a feeding ground, the grass eaters either disappeared entirely from the conti- nent, as in the case of the sloth, or migrated to some other clime, as in the case of the camel. Then came the early Indian settlement of Yang Na on the banks of the Porciun- cula River. This later was occupied by the early settlers from Mexico and the Plaza came into existence between the River and Sunset Boulevard. Slowly at first and then more and more rapidly the town grew until the region around the old tarpit became a part of the city. At that time it was a swampy area or cienega, the home of the duck and the mudhen-a veritable hunters' paradise during the wet season of the year. As land became more valuable, the old cienega was drained and filled and a region suitable for residence was created. Because of its swampy condition, the Board of Education was enabled to buy the twenty-eight acres on which this high school stands at a very low figure. When the time came to build our school, through a friend we were able to secure gratis thirty-eight thousand loads of dirt. This raised the frontage on Melrose twenty-two inches, and so we are kept out of the water most of the time. Thus we have passed by slow transition from the jungle home of the lords of the forest to the more sheltered home of the Lords of Fairfax. 739 M .