The Los Angeles River was paved over in 1938 after a series of devastating floods. The flooding forever altered Southern California's relationship with the elements. Intense rainfall and flash flooding were as much a part of the region's natural cycle as hot summers and Santa Ana winds. But this was the first major flood to occur since the population boom of the 1920s and '30s put neighborhoods in the path that storm runoff had followed for eons. The concrete water sluice, barely a trickle in spots for most of the year, has been used as a backdrop in countless pop videos and movies, including Terminator 2 and Drive. Because of its stark urban wasteland appearance and flat riverbed, it has always been an ideal location for shooting. The bridges overarching the riverbed are architectural treasures designed in the art deco style, each a little different from the next. Thanks to Friends of the L.A. River, the manmade channel has begun to take on features of a natural river in certain sections. Rushes and reeds have flourished, as has the bird population: herons, egrets and ducks now occupy the small islands in the stream. Water has always played a starring role in the story of Los Angeles; now it is possible to connect to the city’s riparian past by walking or cycling along the banks of the much reviled “concrete coffin.”
The vision is for continuous and uninterrupted movement along the L.A. River which would connect neighborhoods to the River, and create an interconnected network of parks and greenway from the mountains to the sea. At least that was the plan back in 2013, when completing a continuous 51-mile greenway and bike path along the river by 2020 seemed both possible and far away. Today, it is more of a patchwork quilt, very much in development, with pocket parks springing up as well as the rather impressive North Atwater pedestrian bridge, built for equestrians and pedestrians alike, which was supposed to cost $6 million but ended up costing $16 million. With a bit of a sailboat-like design, it is undoubtedly an elegant piece of engineering, but a stark contrast to the makeshift shelters of the homeless people living along the L.A. River’s concrete banks. There is still a sense of this being an overlooked place, which is part of its charm, but it also means being confronted by some of the hardships people face. That might deter some visitors. To me, the river is a beautiful example of the resilience and regenerative power of nature. The region’s birthplace, once a thriving, unifying water source for the Tongva peoples and wildlife, is alive again. It is also an example of human grit. In 1986, writer Lewis MacAdams declared the River open to the people and swore to serve as its voice. And so, Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR) and the River Movement were born. Sadly, MacAdams died on April 21, 2020. Andy Lipkis, executive director of the environmental non-profit TreePeople, said MacAdams has inspired him and others who pioneered L.A.’s early environmental movement.
But bringing back the L.A. River is also a way to combat L.A.'s culture of forgetting and erasing its history. As nature writer Jenny Price put it: "What makes the L.A. River so peerlessly amazing is that its city actively "disappeared" it: We stopped calling the river a river. And it all but vanished from our collective memory. ... This act is unparalleled: A major American city redefined its river as infrastructure; decreed that the sole purpose of a river is to control its own floods; and said its river now belongs in the same category as the electrical grid and the freeway system and will forthwith be removed from the company of the Columbia, the Allegheny, the Salmon. In a city with a notorious, extreme tendency to erase both nature and history, L.A.'s ultimate act of erasure has been not just to forget but to deny that the river it was founded on runs 51 miles — 51 miles! — right through its heart."
