Discovering Griffith Park. Casey Schreiner
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Название: Discovering Griffith Park
Автор: Casey Schreiner
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Спорт, фитнес
isbn: 9781680512670
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One of the soldiers in the Anza expedition was José Vicente Feliz, who returned to Los Angeles in 1781 as the military leader of Los Pobladores—the original forty-four settlers and four soldiers who walked from Sinaloa and Sonora, Mexico, to found El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Ángeles Sobre el Río de la Porciúncula (“The Town of the Queen of Angels on the River Porciúncula”—think about that the next time someone complains about people shortening the full name of the city to “L.A.”). This event is commemorated on Labor Day weekend with processions, Masses, and a celebration usually held in the Pueblo de Los Angeles at Olvera Street.
Feliz spent some time in San Diego but returned to the Pueblo in 1787 to serve as the governor’s representative. For his efforts, he was given a Spanish land grant from Cahuenga Pass to the Los Angeles River, including much of the flatlands to the south. The land became known as Rancho Los Feliz.
Feliz died in 1822—one year after Mexico won its independence from Spain. His daughter-in-law Doña María Ygnacia Verdugo took over the operations of Rancho Los Feliz and immediately exercised some pretty sharp business and legal acumen during a period of relative instability in the region. She registered a lucrative personal cattle brand, successfully petitioned the new Mexican government for a confirmation of her land rights to Rancho Los Feliz, and—perhaps most importantly—secured the rancho’s water rights to the Los Angeles River.
The next few decades were tumultuous for both the Los Feliz estate and for California in general. Throughout the 1830s and ’40s, tension mounted between Californios and Mexicans, and eventually between Mexico and the United States, culminating in the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. Even before California became part of the United States, American businessmen were moving into the region and taking advantage of the messy legal paperwork to basically seize rancho land. Doña María’s ironclad contracts kept most of them at bay, but by the 1850s she had sold off sections of the rancho to her daughters and passed the bulk of Rancho Los Feliz to her son Antonio, who would build the still-standing walls of the Los Feliz adobe house in 1853 (today, it’s the Park Film Office).
THE CURSE OF THE FELIZES
One of the best-known and most-told ghost stories in Griffith Park is the so-called Curse of the Felizes. According to legend, Don Antonio Feliz—then the bachelor landowner of Rancho Los Feliz—succumbed to a smallpox outbreak in 1863. Before he died, he sent his young niece Petranilla away to prevent infection while his sister Soledad stayed on.
When Petranilla was away, Don Antonio signed a deathbed will witnessed by his friend Antonio Coronel and an unnamed lawyer. Soledad got some furniture. Petranilla got a big fat nothing. And Coronel, by some strange stroke of luck, got all of Rancho Los Feliz.
It’s understandable, then, that Petranilla was a bit peeved when she returned to find her home no longer in the hands of her family. This is when she apparently cursed anyone who owned the land that rightfully belonged to the Feliz family, at least according to notorious yarn spinner Horace Bell. Local historian and outdoor author John W. Robinson dug into this legend in the 1980s and essentially said Bell made the whole thing up.
Misfortune did seem to be a regular occurrence at Rancho Los Feliz from then onward, though. Coronel quickly gave all the land to his lawyer, who was later shot and killed. Next up was Leon Baldwin, whose crops failed and cattle died, forcing him to sell to Griffith J. Griffith. Baldwin was later murdered by bandits in Mexico, and Griffith experienced his own series of unfortunate events, too. The ghosts of Don Antonio and Petranilla have both allegedly been seen at Bee Rock and at the old Feliz adobe but have reportedly calmed down now that the land is a public park.
Unfortunately, Antonio didn’t have as much luck with the rancho as his mom did. A combination of a smallpox outbreak and some shenanigans from Yankee lawyers brought the land into American hands and eventually to the park’s namesake, Griffith J. Griffith.
The Complicated Story of Griffith J. Griffith
Born in 1850 in South Wales (where, apparently, it’s not uncommon for people to have the same first and last name) to a large, poor, Protestant family, Griffith Jenkins Griffith lived in the same stone house that had been in his family for generations. His parents divorced after he was born, but he ended up sharing this farmhouse with five half brothers and three half sisters.
As a young boy Griffith lived with various relatives throughout this coaland iron-mining region of Wales until an uncle offered to take him to America. He moved to Pennsylvania at the age of sixteen and became the de facto adopted son of the Mowry family, who had lost their son in the Civil War.
Griffith made a name for himself with his writing—first working for the Pennsylvania Brewers Association and later as a reporter for the Daily Alta California in the 1870s. Griffith talked up his experience living near the mines in Wales and became the region’s first mining correspondent. This job saw him traveling across the Southwest and into Mexico—and put him in touch with some of the richest and most powerful people, too.
Griffith’s journalism transitioned into more lucrative mining boosterism and eventually into investment in mines, where he undoubtedly had a lot of access to insider information from his writing contacts. Griffith made enough money to purchase 4071 acres of Rancho Los Feliz in 1882.
He made more money through lending and real estate—and started making enemies in Los Angeles with his somewhat ostentatious behavior. He adopted the title of Colonel (despite never actually achieving that rank in a military outfit) and was known to parade around downtown in long overcoats with an exquisite gold-headed cane, earning the ire of some of the city’s stuffiest shirts. At the same time, though, Griffith was active in philanthropy, both personal and civic—on a trip to Europe he paid for his father and eight siblings to come to America and put the youngest through school. He also paid for the Mowrys’ living expenses after they fell on tough times and built them an exquisite gravestone marker. And remember Doña Verdugo’s hard-fought water rights? Griffith sold them to the downstream city for well below market value, becoming a bona fide hero to the thirsty boomtown.
GHOSTS OF GRIFFITH PARK
The Curse of the Felizes isn’t the only ghost story told in Griffith Park. The ghost of Peg Entwistle is said to haunt the southern flank of Mount Lee. The struggling actress moved to a house on Beachwood Drive for a fresh start in Hollywood, but the film that was supposed to be her big break ended up bombing. On September 18, 1932, she climbed to the top of the H in the Hollywoodland Sign and jumped off, killing herself. Paranormal-minded hikers have claimed to see her falling from the H or wandering the nearby trails at night, and they often report the scent of her favorite gardenia perfume in the air.
Actress Peg Entwistle in 1925 (Theatrical Portrait Photographs, TCS 28, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University)
Interestingly enough, the number of ghost stories and sightings in Griffith Park increased exponentially once the internet came around. Of these, Haunted Picnic Table 29 is СКАЧАТЬ