Gentle reader,
We just keep thinking about the hundreds of “eternal” residents of the Los Angeles County Poor Farm Cemetery on the western edge of the poorly guarded, arson-plagued, largely-demolished Rancho Los Amigos property, and about how very different their experiences were from those who have the misfortune to be desperately poor, addicted, mentally ill, infirm and alone in Los Angeles today.
Los Angeles County has vast resources, yet seems addicted to squandering them. If only there was some kind of rehab program to cure bad governance!
But the past holds lessons we can’t afford to ignore.
As the site’s official historian Colleen Fliedner writes, at the turn of the 20th Century, Los Angeles County was a beacon for progressive, ethical and fiscally responsible community care.
The Poor Farm was nothing like the places where citizens who would otherwise be homeless get warehoused today.
It was not a collection of tiny, highly flammable sheds down by the railroad tracks, nor was it a Skid Row tower with no services and scant security, where a vulnerable resident might lose their precious housing voucher after strangers trash their unit for clout and clicks—as seen in last week’s viral, can’t-look-away social media train wreck.
The dorms and cottages, medical wards and community spaces down on the farm in Downey were a real home to people who needed one.
And for those who lived and died there, they closed their eyes for the last time secure in the knowledge that they would have a real grave, where friends could come and think about them.
The terrible 1914 flood rendered the Poor Farm’s dedicated cemetery unusable for future casket burials, and today the ashes of Los Angeles County’s indigent and unclaimed are buried in the County’s cemetery in Boyle Heights.
But extensive research by us and others has shown no evidence that those buried in Downey decades ago were ever disinterred or reburied elsewhere.
Local lore in the Hollydale community knows this parcel as the old cemetery, though details are understandably hazy. And when we’ve stopped by to check on the excavation, on two different occasions, concerned citizens have come over to ask if we can tell them what’s going on.
The best way for them to get answers is through official channels, with an open dialogue with the powerful players responsible for changing the historic cemetery property into an affordable housing site.
But even though County Supervisor Janice Hahn has not yet scheduled such a community meeting, we learned some things during our March 4 visit that made us feel better, and that we hope will put other troubled minds at ease.
We arrived to find a crew from Cogstone Resource Management on site, with a large pop-up white tent obscuring apparent deep excavation work in the pit on the south side of the property.
According to their website, “Cogstone Resource Management provides competent and respectful cultural and paleontological resources compliance services that are reliable, cost-effective, and result in superior work products. We take pride in developing strong working relationships and collaboration with our clients, local Native American Tribes, and other stakeholders.”
After we stood on the sidewalk for some time observing, the crew broke for lunch and we engaged project leader John Gust in conversation through the fence. He was gracious and generous with his time, listening to our concerns and answering questions about the work Cogstone has been contracted to do.
We expressed our dismay that despite our first informing Janice Hahn’s deputy Ivan Sulic in January 2022 about the possibility of human remains still being present, and a recent ground penetrating radar survey showing evidence of uniform rows and anomalies consistent with burials, there had been no public notice that an historic cemetery was to be dug up.
We told him that the County’s two contracted historic assessments (by Sapphos Environmental in 2012, Rincon Consultants Inc. in 2025) were fatally flawed due to the false claim that all burial records had been lost. In fact, the names and plot numbers of several hundred people in the cemetery are known.
He told us that soil was being removed in thin layers, and that his team was finding clear evidence of serious water activity on the soil, likely from the 1914 flood or later incidents.
Numerous cement markers with numbers on them had been found underground, but they were jumbled up, not in neat rows.
He told us that so far no evidence of large quantities of buried cremains had been found, but they had located a small number of body parts and possible casket fixtures. They were also finding marbles and other artifacts consistent with the field having been used as a children’s playground and occasional carnival site.
He told us that that when potential remains were located, the area around them was marked off for more thorough excavation, fully documented and finds collected for removal to Cogstone’s lab in Orange. His understanding was that the County would arrange for the remains to be reburied at some unknown site and time. He did not know if any attempt would be made to collect DNA samples to match with descendants, or if the remains would be cremated or left intact.
He gave us his card and encouraged us to stay in touch if we had more questions, and we left him to his lunch.
While we remain distressed that the County is disturbing these graves instead of leasing space to build affordable housing on the massive, corpse-free Rancho Los Amigos property to the east, we felt better after talking with John Gust. He’s a pro and clearly cares.
It would be helpful if the County organized a community meeting so more people who are concerned can have their minds put at ease. If you agree, please:
• Send a message to Supervisor Janice Hahn—by phone at (213) 626-6941 or by email to FourthDistrict@bos.lacounty.gov—and let her know that you care about the Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery and want her to hold a public meeting explaining the plans for the site, the treatment and disposition of any human remains or grave goods that are uncovered during construction, and how the dead will be memorialized at the new housing development.
It is our sincere hope that in years to come, there will be a pleasant, peaceful and public place on the edge of the cemetery property where people can learn about how well Los Angeles County used to care for the least among us, and can carry those progressive ideals out into the community to implement them once again.
Saturday’s tour is Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive, co-hosted by neighborhood historian Nathan Marsak and native son Gordon Pattison. Come discover a fascinating Los Angeles neighborhood that was almost entirely lost to misguided redevelopment, the rare treasures that survive, and some cool things that were built on the cleared plateau. This is one of our more occasional tours, and we hope you’ll join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore & the Dutch Chocolate Shop (3/28) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
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Heritage Square is donating $50,000 to the Bureau of Engineering for development of its own Master Plan. To be studied: improving the Pasadena Avenue entrance gate and special event parking. And, we hope, saving more demolition threatened buildings! We’ll visit Heritage Square to talk about early preservation advocacy, housing moving and how the Bunker Hill mansions were lost on the Highland Park Arroyo tour on May 2.
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Deranged civic hostility/incompetence in Pacific Palisades: The Gas Company breaks a water line, box truck is diverted to smash into a protected sycamore tree, then cops hold citizens at bay as they beg city crew to follow arborist’s advice, not chop it down.
A lovely obituary in the New York Times for silent cinema sleuth John Bengtson, calling out Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley in Hollywood as his greatest discovery. This astonishing site has been illegally gated since the pandemic, public space used as a nightclub lounge. C’mon, Hugo Soto-Martinez: free the landmark so fans can dash out of the alley like the silent comedy greats once did! We’ll be sharing some of John Bengtson’s discoveries on the Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends tour on April 18.
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Coolest auction of the season is Potter & Potter’s Scab Vendor: Rare Tattoo Flash and Underground Art from the Collection of Jonathan Shaw, featuring some wild pieces from the sailor-serving parlors of the Long Beach Pike, erased by redevelopment.
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Have you been yearning to see the lost Gower Gulch Medicine Show Caravan one more time? Now you can have your very own miniature of the coolest strip mall sign in Hollywood history: Kieran Wright aka Small Scale LA just released an edition of three.
What happened when City Council voted to demolish the Barry Building, then sent it back to PLUM, where councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Nithya Raman had previously yapped through public comment from indigenous activist Roy Payan? They blew the case to benefit the billionaire Mungers, painting a bullseye on every Los Angeles landmark.
In 2021, Vladimir Beron pitched apartments to replace two Craftsman houses, but never broke ground. One house was demolished, the other left unsecured to be a drug den. Sam Quinones reports on the inevitable fire that killed Juan Galicia’s pups and gutted his house next door.
Fascinating inside city politics piece by Julia Wick on L.A. Material’s launch day. What we want to know is who in City Hall or her kitchen cabinet urged Karen Bass to remove Nithya Raman from the AQMD board—a wonky side gig that she really enjoyed, and was angered to lose? This seems to have been the precipitating act that inspired Raman to get into the race.
The Hotel Cecil’s elevators might always be stigmatized after that creepy video circulated of the missing Elisa Lam talking to nobody. But this week, Rev. Dylan Littlefield reports that work is being done to fix the long-stalled 1957 Oliver & Williams car. Yay!
