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National Geographic : 1962 Oct
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National Geographic, October, 1962 After traveling the 151/2-mile length of Wilshire Boulevard, I realized that this street is the unifying element in the diversity of Los Angeles. It ties together the city of today with the city's past; virtually everything that has happened to Los Angeles has happened or is represented on Wilshire. The boulevard began as an animal trail, then became an Indian trace and a path for the Spaniards' ox-drawn carretas.It traverses old millionaires' row in the no-longer-fashion able Westlake district, and borders Fremont Place, a present enclave of the rich. Its lands are the acres of the old Spanish ranchos-La Brea, Rodeo de las Aguas (Gath ering of the Waters), Las Cienegas, and San Jose de Buenos Aires. In the spring its vacant lots blaze with yellow mustard bloom, only a short taxi ride from today's skyscrapers. It has some of the most exclusive stores in the city, laid out so that customers can enter from parking lots in the rear. Wilshire runs past Westwood Village, seat of UCLA, which has grown from a provincial normal school to a university of high degree in less than fifty years. I drove onto the hilly 465-acre campus where the buildings, mod eled after those of Italy's Lombardy, shone golden in the sunshine (pages 486-7). A bright yellow crane formed a Y against the blue of the sky, a symbol of the rush to complete new buildings for the urgent needs of the growing student body (almost 20,000 at present). UCLA is physically raw-looking, but that will change; the Regents appropriated $50,000 for tree planting in 1958. Ships Steer by a Golden Angel From Wilshire Boulevard the jutting spire of the world's largest Mormon temple can be seen. Atop it, 273 feet in the air, stands the golden figure of the angel Moroni, a trium phant trumpet at his lips. Ships 25 miles at sea use the floodlighted tower as a guide mark on clear nights. Beyond Westwood, Wilshire curves through a sprawling Veterans Administration facility and then straightens for its final drive to the sea through Santa Monica. On this last stretch of the boulevard is Douglas Park, named for Donald Douglas, who did experimental work on his early planes on the site. I used to hang around that plant when I was a boy, intrigued by the idea of aviation so close to my home. None of those early plane men looked very great then, with their khaki coveralls and greasy hands, but they shrank the world. Enormous Tusks Spike the Skull of a Mammoth La Brea Tar Pits, sticky quagmires in Hancock Park where oil and tar still bubble from subterranean pools, trapped thousands of now-extinct mammals and birds. La Brea skeletons in the Los Angeles County Mu seum in Exposition Park make up the world's largest Pleistocene collection. This imperial mammoth, a close relative of the ele phant, towered 12 feet. Washingtonia palms, na tive to canyons of north western Mexico, soar 75 feet above a street in Pasa dena. Their skirts of dead leaves have been trimmed to the top. KODACHROMESBY NATIONALGEOGRAPHICPHOTOGRAPHERTHOMASNEBBIA © N.G .S . 484
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