Skip to main content
Back to Show
Lost LA

Griffith Park: The Untold History

Season 4 Episode 1

At more than 4,500 acres, Griffith Park is one of the largest municipal parks in the United States. Its founder, the controversial and complicated Griffith J. Griffith, donated the land to the city as a public recreation ground for all the people — an ideal that has been challenged over the years. In this episode, Sarah Wilson, director of Education at the Autry Museum of the American West, explains the upcoming “Investigating Griffith Park,” exhibition and the effort to create an archive of all things Griffith Park. It also features Casey Schreiner, hiker and author of the book “Discovering Griffith Park: A Local's Guide,” in a visit to a Mexican-era adobe within the park boundaries. We also ride the historic Merry-go-Round where Griffith’s ideal of equal access was challenged.


Want to host a screening of this episode? Visit the Events Resource Library.

Support Provided By
Season
Historic Filipinotown
26:39
How Filipino Americans in Southern California are making their heritage more visible.
Fast Food and Car Culture
26:47
Iconic fast-food chains from McDonald’s to Taco Bell were born in SoCal.
From Little Tokyo to Crenshaw
26:37
After internment camps, Japanese Americans made L.A.'s Crenshaw neighborhood their home.
Prehistoric Landscapes
26:46
Dig deep into Southern California’s past to reveal lessons for our climate-changed future.
Winemaking
26:41
Explore a forgotten age when winemaking was Southern California’s principal industry.
Who Killed the Red Car?
26:46
Why did Los Angeles dismantle one of the greatest rail transit systems in the nation?
Shindana Dolls | Still from "Lost LA" S4 E6: Shindana Toy Company
26:40
Explore the lasting impact of the Shindana Toy Company, created out of the need for community empowerment following the 1965 Watts uprising, whose ethnically correct black dolls forever changed the American doll industry.
Mount Wilson Observatory | Image from "Lost LA" S4 E5: Discovering the Universe
24:52
As recently as a century ago, scientists doubted whether the universe extended beyond our own Milky Way — until astronomer Edwin Hubble, working with the world’s most powerful telescope discovered just how vast the universe is.
Paul Revere Williams opposite a man explaining a project | Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
26:17
Although best known for designing the homes of celebrities like Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra, the pioneering African-American architect Paul Revere Williams also contributed to some of the city’ s most recognizable civic structures.
Men and women toasting farewell to the 18th Amendment during Prohibition | Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection,University of Southern California Libraries
26:40
Prohibition may have outlawed liquor, but that didn’t mean the booze stopped flowing. Explore the myths of subterranean Los Angeles, crawl through prohibition-era tunnels, and visit some of the city’s oldest speakeasies.
A Monument in the Cemetery at Manzanar Relocation Center | Ansel Adams, Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
26:40
During World War II, three renowned photographers captured scenes from the Japanese incarceration: outsiders Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams and incarceree Tōyō Miyatake who boldly smuggled in a camera lens to document life from within the camp.
Fantasyland Banner
26:40
Los Angeles has long been the place where you can imagine something — a time period, a location, ordinary or exotic, real or fantasy — and build it. It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1910s and 1920s, when early filmmakers built huge, elaborately themed sets that often remained standing for months or years, inviting visitors to explore and to imagine being a part of the action. It found its fullest expression in nearby Anaheim, where Walt Disney’s Imagineers created the intricately themed, immersive experience that is Disneyland.
Active loading indicator