page_title: Los Angeles River
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Los Angeles River / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Los Angeles River at Griffith Park, ca.1898-1910 Photograph of the Los Angeles River on the north side of Griffith Park, ca.1898-1910. A man in a bowler hat is sitting on the bank watching the river flow through the sluice gate of a water ditch. Relatively still waters in the foreground. Trees and foliated hills in background.; Originally, the record was entitled as "Headwaters of the Los Angeles River at Griffith Park". The Los Angeles River's headwaters, however, are farther NW in the western San Fernando Valley, in Canoga Park. Call number: CHS-2033 Filename: CHS-2033 Coverage date: 1898/1910 Part of collection: California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960 Format: glass plate negatives Type: images Geographic subject (city or populated place): Griffith Park; Los Angeles Repository name: USC Libraries Special Collections Accession number: 2033 Microfiche number: 1-91-; 1-110- Archival file: chs_Volume34/CHS-2033.tiff Part of subcollection: Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, 1860-1960 Repository address: Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189 Geographic subject (country): USA Format (aacr2): 2 photographs&#160;: photoprints, b&amp;w&#160;; 21 x 26 cm. Rights: Digitally reproduced by the USC Digital Library; From the California Historical Society Collection at the University of Southern California Subject (adlf): hydrographic structures Project: USC Repository email: specol@usc.edu Contributing entity: California Historical Society Date created: 1898/1910 Publisher (of the digital version): University of Southern California. Libraries Format (aat): photographic prints; photographs Geographic subject (state): California Subject (file heading): Los Angeles -- Parks -- Griffith Park; Engineering -- Aqueducts -- General; Los Angeles -- Los Angeles River Legacy record ID: chs-m2357; USC-0-1-1-2418; USC-0-1-1-10217 Access conditions: Send requests to address or e-mail given. Phone (213) 821-2366; fax (213) 740-2343. Geographic subject (county): Los Angeles Subject (lcsh): Parks; Rivers; Water-supply
context_page_description: The Los Angeles River is a major river in Los Angeles County, California. Its headwaters are in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, and it flows nearly 51 miles from Canoga Park through the San Fernando Valley, Downtown Los Angeles, and the Gateway Cities to its mouth in Long Beach. While the river was once free-flowing and frequently flooding, forming alluvial flood plains along its banks, it is currently notable for flowing through a concrete channel on a fixed course, which was built after a series of devastating floods in the early 20th century.
  Before the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the river was the primary source of fresh water for the city. Although the Los Angeles region still receives some water from the river and other local sources, most of the water supply flows from several aqueducts serving the area. The Los Angeles River is heavily polluted from agricultural and urban runoff.
  Fed primarily by rainwater and snowmelt, the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, and urban discharge, it is one of the few low-elevation perennial rivers in Southern California.
context_section_description: The river provided a source of water and food for the Tongva people prior to the arrival of the Spanish. After the establishment of Mission San Gabriel in 1771, the Spanish would refer to all of the Tongva living in that mission's vicinity as Gabrieleño. The Tongva were hunters and gatherers who lived primarily off fish, small mammals, and the acorns from the abundant oak trees along the river's path. There were at least 45 Tongva villages located near the Los Angeles River, concentrated in the San Fernando Valley and the Elysian Valley, in what is present day Glendale.
  In 1769, members of the Portolá expedition to explore Alta California were the first Europeans to see the river. On August 15, the party camped near the river, somewhere along the stretch just to the north of the Interstate 10 crossing near downtown Los Angeles. Fray Juan Crespi, one of two Franciscan missionaries traveling with Portolá, named it el río de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Ángeles de Porciúncula. Crespi chose that name, because August 15 is the date of the yearly Catholic feast day in honor of the Virgin Mary's Assumption into Heaven and assuming the role as Queen of the Angels, to which the small Portiuncula chapel, where the Franciscan Order began in Assisi, Italy, is dedicated. The river was thereafter referred to as the "Porciuncula River". In later years, the "Los Angeles" part of Crespi's lengthy name won out.
  The river was originally an alluvial river that ran freely across a flood plain that is now occupied by Los Angeles, Long Beach and other townships in Southern California. Its path was unstable and unpredictable, and the mouth of the river moved frequently from one place to another between Long Beach and Ballona Creek. In the early 19th century, the river turned southwest after leaving the Glendale Narrows, where it joined Ballona Creek and discharged into Santa Monica Bay in present Marina del Rey.  However, this account is challenged by Col. J. J. Warner, in his Historical Sketch of Los Angeles County:
  "...until 1825 it was seldom, if in any year, that the river discharged even during the rainy season its waters into the sea. Instead of having a river way to the sea, the waters spread over the country, filling the depressions in the surface and forming lakes, ponds and marshes. The river water, if any, that reached the ocean drained off from the land at so many places, and in such small volumes, that no channel existed until the flood of 1825, which, by cutting a river way to tide water, drained the marsh land and caused the forests to disappear."
  Prior to the Great Flood of 1862, it was joined by the San Gabriel River in present-day Long Beach, but in that year the San Gabriel carved out a new course 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east, and has discharged into Alamitos Bay ever since.
  Until the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, the Los Angeles River was the primary water source for the Los Angeles Basin, but much of its channel had extremely low discharge except during the winter rains. Unpredictable and devastating floods continued to plague it well into the 1930s (the most notable one being the catastrophic 1938 flood that precipitated the recall of then-mayor of Los Angeles Frank L. Shaw), leading to calls for flood control measures. The Army Corps of Engineers duly began an ambitious project of completely encasing the river's bed and banks in concrete, with only a trickle of water usually flowing down its middle. The only portions of the river that are not completely paved over are in the flood-control basin behind the Sepulveda Dam near Van Nuys; an 11-mile (17.7-km) stretch east of Griffith Park known as the Glendale Narrows; and along its last few miles in Long Beach.
  The river was dry for nine months of the year as late as the 1950s. According to an August 2013 article in the Los Angeles Times, the water in the river today is largely "industrial and residential discharge," which originates from the "two giant pipes that collect the sewage from the homes of 800,000 San Fernando Valley residents" that lead to the Til
caption: Los Angeles River at Griffith Park, c. 1898–1910
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