A Tour of Chavez Ravine in Under 2 Minutes

4/21/2015

For those who want a quick tour of what happened in Chavez Ravine

The four neighborhoods that made up the Chavez Ravine communities are la Loma, Palo Verde, Bishop, and Solano Canyon; all but Solano Canyon are now gone, destroyed and leveled down to bare earth through eminent domain for a housing project that was proposed but died in its infancy and was never built. Much of the land is now occupied by Dodger Stadium and its parking lots. The streets that were contained within each of those communities are:

la Loma: Phoenix Street, Spruce Street, Yolo Drive, Pine Street, Agua Pura Drive, and Brooks Avenue from Bouett Street to Effie Street

Palo Verde: Bishop’s Road, Davis Street, Curtis Street, Paducah Street, Reposa Street, Gabriel Avenue, Malvina Avenue, Stimson Court, and Boylston Street, with house numbers beginning with the 1700 block and running to the Elysian Park boundary; plus the odd-numbered houses on Effie Street, beginning with the 1100 block

Bishop: Davis Street, Paducah Street, Home Place, and Boylston Street, from Garibaldi Drive to Effie Street, including Garibaldi Drive; plus the even-numbered houses on Effie Street, beginning with the 1100 block

Solano Canyon: Solano Avenue, Casanova Street, Amador Street, Jarvis Street, Bouett Street, Buena Vista Road (later North Broadway), Yuba Street from the 1300 block to the 1500 block, and Brooks Avenue from the Elysian Park boundary to Bouett Street

Growth in the Chavez Ravine communities exploded, in la Loma following World War I and in Palo Verde in the 1930s and 1940s. Remember, however, that the first residents of Solano Canyon were the founding family of Francisco Solano and his wife, Rosa Casanova, and their six children, and that they were living in the cañon in an adobe shortly after 1866 that was built by Francisco Solano on a stream that flowed from a spring higher up in the ravine. Steady growth in Solano Canyon began after it was surveyed for house lots in 1888 by Alfredo Solano, Francisco and Rosa's son.

This is what Solano Canyon and la Loma looked like from above the Solano Avenue School circa 1930:

View of la Loma from Solano Canyon, circa 1930

The eviction notice for la Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop is dated 24 July 1950. While some families sold their homes and relocated voluntarily, others did not. What is possibly the last eviction, that of the Arechiga family at 1771 Malvina Street, was captured on film:

By the mid-1950s, when almost all of the evicted families had left, much of Chavez Ravine looked like this:

Despite the evictions, the public housing project that was supposed to replace the ‘Latino slum’ in the hills, for which, the residents of Chavez Ravine were promised access to housing, was never built; instead, in 1962, this is what became of the Chavez Ravine communities of la Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop: