The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Creating the North American Landscape)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press March 1, 2001
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0801866421
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0801866425
• Book Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.7 pounds

Product Review
Why is the historic center of Los Angeles located where it is, 15 miles from the ocean and ten miles from the San Gabriel Mountains, on an arid plain? The answer is the Los Angeles River, which once flowed freely across that flat land. In his book, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth, Blake Gumprecht points out that before the course of the river was paved, Hollywood and Beverly Hills were marshland and that in flood years, the river carried as much water as the Mississippi.

"The destruction of the river had begun half a century before the first concrete was poured," Gumprecht writes, "when the river began to be viewed not as a giver of life or a thing of beauty, but as a dumping ground--for horse carcasses, petroleum waste, and the city's garbage." The river, he adds, was also viewed as a mere vehicle for a commodity, water, and a vehicle that could be improved with the addition of channels, culverts, and reservoirs. Such changes made the wide-scale development of the Los Angeles region possible, but they destroyed the living river. Now, years later, environmental activists are pressing to restore the river to something of its former self--and their efforts, if successful, will again alter the course of regional history.

The Los Angeles River has figured widely in many ecological studies of Southern California; in historical work it has figured largely as a backdrop. Gumprecht grants the river close attention as a thing unto itself, one that has affected many other aspects of the area's social, economic, and environmental history. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
For those even aware that it exists, the Los Angeles River conjures up an image of a barren concrete channelAa place best suited for Hollywood car chases and gang brawls. There was a time, however, when the L.A. River, which runs from the San Fernando Valley into the Pacific, had an entirely different image, not to mention a different course. Before modern flood control programs fixed the river's path with high cement walls, it ran variously south and west, at one time emptying into the Santa Monica Bay. In this exhaustive and lively investigation, Gumprecht, a geography professor and former Los Angeles Times reporter, charts the waterway's evolution from a "beautiful stream, wandering peacefully amid willows and wild grapes" to the refuse-strewn, "ugly, concrete gutter" it is today. Gumprecht describes the crucial role that the river played in the settlement and growth of L.A.Aboth as a water source and as a symbol of the region's Arcadian promiseAand, conversely, how the river was remade in the image of the metropolis itself, becoming depleted and degraded by the very development it made possible. Like fellow L.A. historian Mike Davis, Gumprecht scatters an archive of startling photographs throughout the book, from a man holding a 25-pound trout caught in the river in 1940 to the scene of a riverbed drag race broken up by the police in 1950. Conjuring images of Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Gumprecht's river "biography" breathes vitality into a subject that in the hands of a less enthusiastic author might be drier than the industrial wasteland that he describes.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This fascinating book is packed with information about the history of Los Angeles. Not many present-day Angelenos would know that the location for the city was chosen because of the once-abundant flow of the Rio de Porciuncula, or Los Angeles River. Blake Gumprecht pulls an amazing feat in researching the River's many incarnations alongside the history of the growth of Los Angeles. In addition to providing detailed reports of the River's former courses, and devastating accounts of some of the River's infamous catastrophic floods, Mr. Gumprecht explains the River's role in shaping the course of Los Angeles city politics in greater detail than any previous study. Once an ample stream that sustained all of the city's water needs for over 100 years, the Los Angeles River was then pumped dry, smothered in concrete, and almost pushed out of the city's consciousness. Incredible photographs appear throughout the book; many of these photos will make nature-loving Angelenos yearn for the Los Angeles River of yesteryear, with its bubbling, meandering stream, and its banks lined with willows and sycamores. Long before you approach the end of this book, you realize that, in an over-zealous attempt to control flooding, the Los Angeles River was essentially raped, depleted, and buried. The fact that, at present, most of its 51 miles are cement is a shame -- especially in a city with so little park space. Amazingly, the River still provides up to 15% of L.A.'s drinking water, albeit from subterannean pumps that tap the River's flow before it ever reaches the surface. And millions of gallons of River water were diverted to the Silver Lake reservoir. People who never knew that there was a Los Angeles River should go see the few surviving River greenbelts in the Glendale Narrows and the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area to appreciate our city's River as it used to be. P.S. - I encourage other Los Angeles River buffs to look at Kevin Roderick's book "San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb" to see other beautiful pictures of the River in its natural state, before the concrete obscured it.