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The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Creating the North American Landscape) (Paperback)

by Blake Gumprecht (Author) "WALKING ALONG THE CONCRETE BANKS OF THE LOS Angeles River, straight and smooth and wide, it is hard to imagine what the river might once..." (more)
Key Phrases: comprehensive flood control plans, comprehensive plan for flood control, flood control officials, San Fernando Valley, Southern California, Long Beach (more...)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Why is the historic center of Los Angeles located where it is, 15 miles from the ocean and 10 miles from the San Gabriel Mountains, on an arid plain? The answer is the Los Angeles River, which once flowed freely across that flat land. In his book, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth, Blake Gumprecht points out that before the course of the river was paved, Hollywood and Beverly Hills were marshland and that in flood years, the river carried as much water as the Mississippi.

"The destruction of the river had begun half a century before the first concrete was poured," Gumprecht writes, "when the river ... began to be viewed not as a giver of life or a thing of beauty, but as a dumping ground--for horse carcasses, petroleum waste, and the city's garbage." The river, he adds, was also viewed as a mere vehicle for a commodity, water, and a vehicle that could be improved with the addition of channels, culverts, and reservoirs. Such changes made the wide-scale development of the Los Angeles region possible, but they destroyed the living river. Now, years later, environmental activists are pressing to restore the river to something of its former self--and their efforts, if successful, will again alter the course of regional history.

The Los Angeles River has figured widely in many ecological studies of Southern California; in historical work it has figured largely as a backdrop. Gumprecht grants the river close attention as a thing unto itself, one that has affected many other aspects of the area's social, economic, and environmental history. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
For those even aware that it exists, the Los Angeles River conjures up an image of a barren concrete channelAa place best suited for Hollywood car chases and gang brawls. There was a time, however, when the L.A. River, which runs from the San Fernando Valley into the Pacific, had an entirely different image, not to mention a different course. Before modern flood control programs fixed the river's path with high cement walls, it ran variously south and west, at one time emptying into the Santa Monica Bay. In this exhaustive and lively investigation, Gumprecht, a geography professor and former Los Angeles Times reporter, charts the waterway's evolution from a "beautiful stream, wandering peacefully amid willows and wild grapes" to the refuse-strewn, "ugly, concrete gutter" it is today. Gumprecht describes the crucial role that the river played in the settlement and growth of L.A.Aboth as a water source and as a symbol of the region's Arcadian promiseAand, conversely, how the river was remade in the image of the metropolis itself, becoming depleted and degraded by the very development it made possible. Like fellow L.A. historian Mike Davis, Gumprecht scatters an archive of startling photos throughout the book, from a man holding a 25-pound trout caught in the river in 1940 to the scene of a riverbed drag race broken up by the police in 1950. Conjuring images of Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Gumprecht's river "biography" breathes vitality into a subject that in the hands of a less enthusiastic author might be drier than the industrial wasteland that he describes.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (March 1, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801866421
ISBN-13: 978-0801866425
Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #86,997 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
WALKING ALONG THE CONCRETE BANKS OF THE LOS Angeles River, straight and smooth and wide, it is hard to imagine what the river might once have been. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
comprehensive flood control plans, comprehensive plan for flood control, flood control officials, zanja system, domestic waterworks, revitalize the river, telephone conversation with the author, water overseer, river through downtown, flood control construction, flood control engineers, flood control basin, debris basins, pueblo right, flood control planning, flood control district, flood control program, domestic water system, flood control work, dry season flow, field draft, rock riprap, revised journals, concrete banks, control basins

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
San Fernando Valley, Southern California, Long Beach, Griffith Park, San Pedro, Elysian Park, Arroyo Seco, Rio Hondo, Southern Pacific, San Gabriel River, Army Corps of Engineers, Zanja Madre, Glendale Narrows, Board of Supervisors, Alameda Street, San Gabriel Mountains, United States, Ballona Creek, Crystal Springs, Santa Monica Mountains, Tujunga Wash, First Street, San Diego, Boyle Heights, North Hollywood

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 61 books:

The Los Angeles Metropolis by Howard J. Nelson on 13 pages
Sixty Years in Southern California by Newmark on 6 pages
The City Beautiful Movement (Creating the North American Landscape) by William H. Wilson on 4 pages
California Pastoral (The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft - Volume 34) by George Bancroft in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
Burbank: An Illustrated History by E. Caswell Perry in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

See all 61 books this book cites

8 books cite this book:

Down by the Los Angeles River: Friends of the Los Angeles Rivers Official Guide by Joe Linton on page 7, and Back Matter
The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution by Robert D. Bullard in Back Matter
An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature by Craig E. Colten in Back Matter
The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City by Robert Gottlieb in Back Matter
Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change (Urban and Industrial Environments) by Robert Gottlieb in Back Matter

See all 8 books citing this book

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The Fragmented Metropolis by Robert M. Fogelson

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An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles by Robert Winter

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Customer Reviews

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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The River that Made Los Angeles, September 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Creating the North American Landscape) (Hardcover)

As a boy growing up in North Long Beach in the 1930s, I often camped out with my friends on the banks of the Los Angeles River. We would go skinny dipping, catch pollywogs and lizards, make willow whistles, and trudge through the oily sludge that lined the river bottom. We did not know that once the river flowed year-around crystal clear, teeming with fish and supporting a heavily wooded flood plain rich with swamps, lakes, and wildlife. My first surprise on reading the biography of this once-ample river was the fact that it supported one of the largest concentrations of natives in the country. The first Europeans who settled on its banks named their village after it. This book really tells three stories. The first is how the river contributed to the growth of agriculture during the first 100 years of European settlement, creating a lasting image of fertile vinyards and orchards in the sunshine. After the railroad came, the needs for water grew so rapidly they pumped the river dry and built an aqueduct to the Owens River in the north to supply their needs. The second story is about the river's revenge and the periodic devastation it caused by flooding. Time after time, the river, swollen by storms in the San Gabriel Mountains, would smash through its levies, carry off whole houses, factories, herds of cattle, orchards and vinyards, destroy roads, bridges, cemeteries, and towns, putting the whole county under water. It was not until the late 1930s that an earnest attempt was made to tame the river with a system of dams, catchment basins, and pavement. The third story is about the recent attempts to restore the river to its natural state, an exercise about which the author is skeptical. Blake Gumprecht has given us a splendid book that again shows us how much geology, climate, and topography affect how we live and think of ourselves as a people.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential - An Amazing History of Los Angeles and its River, December 28, 2002

By	"littleghost" (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews

This fascinating book is packed with information about the history of Los Angeles. Not many present-day Angelenos would know that the location for the city was chosen because of the once-abundant flow of the Rio de Porciuncula, or Los Angeles River. Blake Gumprecht pulls an amazing feat in researching the River's many incarnations alongside the history of the growth of Los Angeles. In addition to providing detailed reports of the River's former courses, and devastating accounts of some of the River's infamous catastrophic floods, Mr. Gumprecht explains the River's role in shaping the course of Los Angeles city politics in greater detail than any previous study.

Once an ample stream that sustained all of the city's water needs for over 100 years, the Los Angeles River was then pumped dry, smothered in concrete, and almost pushed out of the city's consciousness. Incredible photographs appear throughout the book; many of these photos will make nature-loving Angelenos yearn for the Los Angeles River of yesteryear, with its bubbling, meandering stream, and its banks lined with willows and sycamores.

Long before you approach the end of this book, you realize that, in an over-zealous attempt to control flooding, the Los Angeles River was essentially raped, depleted, and buried. The fact that, at present, most of its 51 miles are cement is a shame -- especially in a city with so little park space. Amazingly, the River still provides up to 15% of L.A.'s drinking water, albeit from subterannean pumps that tap the River's flow before it ever reaches the surface. And millions of gallons of River water were diverted to the Silver Lake reservoir.

People who never knew that there was a Los Angeles River should go see the few surviving River greenbelts in the Glendale Narrows and the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area to appreciate our city's River as it used to be.

P.S. - I encourage other Los Angeles River buffs to look at Kevin Roderick's book "San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb" to see other beautiful pictures of the River in its natural state, before the concrete obscured it.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great history of L.A., February 9, 2005

By	Z. William Arkosy (California, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reading this book was an assignement for a geography course I was taking in college. My first thoughts were "A book on the L.A. River? How can they write an entire book on a river that flows a couple of days per year?" My indifference to the subject was quickly dismissed after the first few pages. This book is very insightful! It gives a detailed history on L.A., from it's foundation as a tiny pueblo to the sprawling metropolis it is today, with the river & water in Southern California being the central themes. I always wondered why L.A. was built in the area it's in & Mr. Gumprecht answers that in fine detail along with many other interesting facts regarding the annexation of neighboring cities, water rights, deadly floods and ultimately the concrete channel built to contain this unpredictable river.
Whoever is interested in the histroy of this region will no doubt greatly enjoy this superb book!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars LA Has A River????
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