Gentle reader,
This is one of the toughest newsletters we have ever had to write. But once we hit send, a massive weight will be off our shoulders—and you can help carry it.
We need you to walk with us, to listen, to document and to spread the word. Are you up to the task? Then read on!
Because the wider Southern California community needs to know what’s happening at the historic Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery, and to hear the names of the souls who were once buried and may still rest there.
These are names that have not been spoken aloud for many decades—yet each one was a human being who lived and died in the care of Los Angeles County, and was laid down in the cemetery dedicated to their eternal rest.
When a person dies and is buried, a pledge is made by the living. Their grave will be maintained, if not constantly, then respectfully. The laws of the land will be followed. They will not be disgraced, nor will they be forgotten.
This newsletter is dedicated to the collective memory of the eternal residents of the Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery.
It is published in the heartfelt wish that there will be transparent, ethical and appropriate treatment of their mortal remains, and that the County will immediately come forward to explain what has happened to date at the historic cemetery and what is planned for any human remains that are discovered there.
We believe this needs to be presented in a public forum that serves as an opportunity for the community to ask questions and get straight answers.
Because we have a lot of questions, and we know we’re not alone here.
The photo above, taken by a concerned citizen who wishes to remain anonymous, shows the status of 11269 Garfield Avenue, Downey, on the historic Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery parcel around 10am today.
We are informed that the Los Angeles County Coroner was notified at some point on this date of a need for their office to attend to the site.
The video below was shot at mid-afternoon today at the same location, after the white tent was dismantled, also by a concerned citizen who wishes to remain anonymous.
We do not know what organization these individuals work for, what work they are doing, or how much of that work was done inside the tent. We’d like to know.
Here is some background on our advocacy around the historic Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery site:
In January 2022, we first alerted Ivan Sulic, the Deputy who represents Downey for Supervisor Janice Hahn, that our research into Rancho Los Amigos suggested there was the potential for human remains to still be present at the cemetery, which was in regular use from 1888 until major flooding in 1914, and may have been the site of a later mass burial of cremains.
As the County pursued a contract with Abode Housing and PATH Ventures to lease the land and use HUD funds to redevelop it as the Veterans Commons affordable supportive housing project, we worried that construction might disturb forgotten burials. We expressed our hope any excavation would be done properly, and that a public memorial garden would be installed to honor those who died at the County Poor Farm, just to the east, on the other side of the tracks.
We created a dedicated webpage to track our research and advocacy around the cemetery—though most of our efforts happened offline and were not recorded.
Communication with Deputy Sulic has always been challenging.
But he was very quick to respond on 9/5/2025 when we emailed asking that a vote pending on the Supervisors’ agenda the following week be postponed.
It’s kind of a miracle that we spotted this item at all. If you wanted to put a matter up for a public vote, while obscuring its significance, you might write a description like the one applied to item #10.
The description did not include the words “cemetery, “Rancho Los Amigos” or “Poor Farm,” nor the development name “Veterans Commons,” the developer names “Abode Communities” or “PATH Ventures,” nor the street address “11269 Garfield Avenue,” nor even the town name “Downey.”
And yet the vote was for a motion that concerned all of those things!
Here is what Richard emailed to Deputy Sulic on 9/5/2025 at 8:35am:
“For the past four years, I have consistently raised concerns regarding the historical presence of the Rancho Los Amigos resident cemetery on this site, as documented by the County’s own history of the South Campus. To date, there has been no formal disinterment or attempt to identify the location of existing graves and cremains from the early 20th century. Given these unresolved issues, I respectfully urge the County to postpone consideration of this agenda item, commission a comprehensive historic resource evaluation of the site, including a search for unmarked graves and a review by qualified experts and ensure that some form of memorial to the thousands of people who were buried here is included in the new housing project. I am not suggesting the housing project not happen on the historic cemetery site. Housing formerly homeless veterans is work in the spirit of Rancho Los Amigos. There simply needs to be proper assessment of any human remains still on the site, reburial in an active cemetery of any remains that can be retrieved, and some memorial honoring the deceased. All of this is important for those who will be living on the site, the surrounding community, and the memories of those who have passed before them.”
And Deputy Sulic replied at 9:20am:
“Actually Richard I have some news about it this. Can you please resend me your number. I will call you today to explain.”
Based on our pleasant phone conversation that morning, which included Deputy Sulic’s assurance that all potential human remains would be handled appropriately, we then made written public comment posted to the Supervisors’ agenda:
“We have expressed our concerns to the office of Supervisor Janice Hahn about this site’s history as the historic Rancho Los Amigos cemetery, and the likelihood that thousands of cremains still remain in the earth. We appreciate the assurance from the Supervisor’s office that it has taken this information to the California State Office of Historic Preservation (OHP), and is working with a private contractor to do a proper survey of the site before any development begins. We are hopeful that after any former residents of Rancho Los Amigos site are located and moved to an active cemetery, that a memorial garden can be installed, with a plaque honoring the souls who long rested here.”
Sadly, after the vote was held and the lease secured, it once again became extremely difficult to communicate with Deputy Sulic.
We realized we needed to talk to his boss—and we knew just the time and place.
On 12/11/2025, as we have for many years, we attended the annual ceremony honoring the unclaimed dead at the Los Angeles County Cemetery in Boyle Heights, just outside the gates of Evergreen Cemetery.
After the cremains of the 2,308 unclaimed persons who died in 2022 were laid to rest, and after most members of the public and care community had departed, we joined Rev. Dylan Littlefield and approached Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn.
We thanked her for always being present to honor the least and lost among us, and expressed our frustration with Deputy Sulic, who had promised to share the results of the private contractor’s survey of the historic Rancho Los Amigos cemetery and to arrange a meeting to discuss their findings.
Instead, he was ignoring us. Frankly, we were worried sick that the County was failing to ensure the dignity of the dead, so we were ratting him out to his boss.
Please, Supervisor—we need answers!
In anticipation of this meeting, Rev. Dylan, who is also a paralegal and canon law advocate, had researched the legal status of California cemeteries established by local governments in the 19th century. He prepared an overview of the law as it applies to this parcel, which you can read below.
Rev. Dylan concludes: “The Rancho Los Amigos / Poor Farm Cemetery has never been legally abandoned and remains dedicated cemetery land. The County’s cessation of maintenance after 1914 did not terminate its legal obligations. Today, strict Health & Safety Code provisions govern any removal of remains, requiring extensive notice, identification, and reinterment. These statutory obligations—combined with CEQA, criminal liability, and ethical constraints—make using this land for housing legally and practically infeasible unless the County undertakes a lengthy, expensive, and highly regulated disinterment process. The land remains, in law and in fact, a cemetery.”
We handed Supervisor Hahn a copy of this report, along with four other documents:
• A timeline of our advocacy for the Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery.
• Our research into 5600+ cremains that might have been buried in the historic cemetery, which we emailed to Deputy Sulic in January 2022
• An annotated email from State Historic Preservation Officer Julianne Polanco to Brian Talbot, Environmental Analyst in the Community Development Division of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, which we obtained through a public records request, noting its deliberate misinterpretations of fact.
• And finally, a watermarked copy of the first page of the historic cemetery registry, with the names, ages, genders and burial locations of the people laid to rest at the proposed redevelopment site.
When we handed this last document to her, Supervisor Hahn appeared shocked, and asked “Where did you get that?”
We explained that it came from the research files of Colleen Adair Fliedner, the historian the County had hired to write the Rancho Los Amigos centennial book, a copy of which she had gifted to Deputy Sulic. And we pleaded with her, could we get some answers about what was happening at the cemetery?
Supervisor Hahn replied that it sounded like we ought to have a meeting with her and her staff to discuss the situation. Yes, we replied, we would like to have a meeting.
However, all of our subsequent efforts to schedule that meeting have been ignored.
Meanwhile, over time, our public records requests to the Los Angeles County Development Authority (LACDA) and to the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) have trickled in, helping to fill in the gaps about how the County, State and private developers have managed the problem of constructing housing on an old cemetery that was never formally decommissioned.
Below you will find private contractor Rincon Consultants, Inc.’s survey, obtained through a public records request, which describes 88 anomalies and 21 areas of interest flagged by ground penetrating radar, which are consistent with the historic use of the parcel as a cemetery.
And here is an email chain which describes Supervisor Hahn’s personal interest in seeing the project move forward quickly, and the developer’s concern about the cost of shallow excavation if required by the state as part of a treatment plan.
Since we couldn’t get a meeting, we made a date with Rev. Dylan Littlefield to go to the historic cemetery and make a video reading the names of the dead.
When we arrived, we were shocked to discover what appeared to be an active construction site, with green demolition fence, no trespassing signs, construction trailers and several deep, muddy, excavated pits with small sections marked off with sand bags, stakes and plastic tarps.
A couple of concerned citizens ambled over and expressed their growing alarm about the digging at a site everyone in the neighborhood knew as the old cemetery. We suggested they stay and listen, set up our gear, wove a floral bouquet into the fence and sent the names of the dead out into the warm California breeze, for you and all who care to hear.
So what can you do to help carry the weight of the stewardship crisis surrounding the Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery? A lot!
You can:
• Share the link to this newsletter with others who care.
• 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.
• If you are in the area, please visit 11269 Garfield Avenue and take photos and video to document the current status of the cemetery. You can share what you see in the comments below, or email us directly at tours@esotouric.com. Please let us know if you notice any activity that might involve disinterment of human remains or removal of caskets or cremation urns.
The only way to end this post is with Rev. Dylan’s prayer for the dead:
Loving God, we have read the names of all who are entered here.
Their eternal resting place is at risk of being destroyed, desecrated, obliterated, and made unknown.
We ask that you will not only save this sacred place, but save the names of all those people who we have read here today, that their names will not become unknown, that in their death they will have eternal life through our memory of them.
And now you are up to speed, and can be a voice for those who lost their voices more than a century ago. Let’s not settle for lazy, sloppy work. The Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery belongs to all of us, and its fate is in our hands.
Amen.
Saturday’s tour is Film Noir / Real Noir, a seedy blend of iconic motion picture locations and terrifying true crimes that inspired Hollywood screenwriters to craft dark tales and complicated characters. Come find the vintage vistas that remain largely unchanged and discover the noir city so beloved by location scouts. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles’ past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city’s soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Film Noir / Real Noir (3/7) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (3/14) • 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)
