Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eagle Rock is a an upper middle-class neighborhood in northeastern Los Angeles, California. It is bordered by the city of Glendale on the north and west, Highland Park on the south, and the city of Pasadena on the east. Major thoroughfares include Eagle Rock Boulevard, Colorado Boulevard, and Figueroa Street. The Glendale and Ventura freeways run along the district's western and northern edges, respectively. A massive boulder at the district's northern edge contains an indentation which casts a vaguely bird-shaped shadow on the rock at certain times of day; the neighborhood derives its name from this geological feature.
Eagle Rock lays claim to being a center of hipster culture in Los Angeles. It also boasts a significant Filipino population. With an "Anytown, USA" feel to it, this community has often been the choice as a film location for neighboring film studios. Cameos include Top Gun, Hunt for Red October, and a second-season episode of The O.C.
Eagle Rock is the site of Occidental College, which relocated there after a fire destroyed its original campus in Highland Park.
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[edit] History
Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the secluded valley below the San Rafael Hills that is roughly congruent to Eagle Rock's present boundaries was inhabited by the Tongva tribe, who hunted the game that watered at its springs. These aboriginal inhabitants were displaced by Spanish settlers in the late 18th century, with the area incorporated into the Rancho San Rafael. Following court battles the area known as Rancho San Rafael was divided into 31 parcels in 1870. Benjamin Dreyfus was awarded what is now called Eagle Rock. In the 1880s Eagle Rock existed as a farming community. The arrival of American settlers and the growth of Los Angeles resulted in steadily increasing semi-rural development in the region throughout the late 19th century, culminating in Eagle Rock's establishment as an independent city in 1906 and its incorporation in 1911.
In 1909, Hill Avenue, now Hill Drive, was (and still is) one of Eagle Rock's most beautiful streets. Other streets were Royal Drive (now Mt. Royal Drive), Acacia Street (now Laverna Avenue), Kenilworth Avenue (now Hermosa Avenue), Highland Avenue (now Highland View Avenue), and Fairmont Avenue (now Maywood Avenue). In the 1950s, newer streets such as Kincheloe Drive were extended into the hillsides for the building of larger homes with a view of the city. Now these streets are dotted with large and expensive homes on wide lots.
The arrival of Owens Valley water via the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the concurrent depletion of the young city's wells ultimately led the city fathers to agree to annexation by Los Angeles in 1923.
An early victim of the Hillside Strangler was discovered in an Eagle Rock neighborhood on October 31, 1977. The discovery, along with the successive murders of at least ten other women in the area over the course of the five months, rocked what was then a small, close-knit community on the outskirts of Los Angeles. In an opinion piece to the Los Angeles Times on December 6, 1977, a resident under the pseudonym Deirdre Blackstone wrote of the fear experienced by the community: "Groups of gum-chewing girls in look-alike hairdos and jeans who used to haunt the Eagle Rock Plaza — they too are keeping close to home...We are all afraid. For women living alone, ours is an actual visceral fear that starts at the feet. Then it hits the knees — and finally it grips the mind." Two men, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, were subsequently convicted of the murders.
On the night of March 20, 1985, an 8-year old girl was abducted from her home in Eagle Rock and sexually assaulted by a man dubbed the "Valley Intruder", "Walk-in Killer" and "The Night Stalker", later identified as Richard Ramirez. This was the seventh in a long string of murders and sexual assaults committed by Ramirez in Los Angeles and San Francisco before he was apprehended.
[edit] Community
[edit] Education
Eagle Rock residents are zoned to schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
[edit] Public Elementary Schools
- Delevan Drive Elementary School
- Eagle Rock Elementary School
- Dahlia Heights Elementary
- Rockdale Elementary School
- Toland Way Elementary School
[edit] Public Middle & High Schools
The sole public middle/high school is Eagle Rock High School.
Renaissance Arts Academy is a magnet in the area.
[edit] Colleges and universities
[edit] Private schools
- St. Dominic School [1]
[edit] Libraries
Los Angeles Public Library operates the Eagle Rock Branch.
[edit] Famous Residents
Actresses Madeleine Stowe, Marley Shelton, Lindsay Wagner and famous boxer Fernando Vargas Jr. are natives of Eagle Rock. John Steinbeck lived on Campus Road in the 1920s while lecturing briefly at Occidental College. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote Good Will Hunting while living in a home on Hill Drive in Eagle Rock. Famous boxer Fernando Vargas Jr. attended Eagle Rock High School from 1992 to 1998. In the movie Days Of Thunder, Tom Cruise's character was from Eagle Rock. A house on the 5200 block of Shearin Avenue was used during the 1984 filming of Teen Wolf, starring Michael J. Fox.
- Marley Shelton (actress)
- Madeleine Stowe (actress)
- Fernando Vargas Jr. (athlete)
- Virginia Weidler (child star)
- Yvor Winters (literary critic)
- Lindsay Wagner (actress)
[edit] References
- Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council. Eagle Rock - Then And Now. Retrieved on December 18, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Maps and aerial photos
- Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
- Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
- Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council
- TERA (The Eagle Rock Association)
- Eagle Rock Talk Podcast
