The Free Harbor Fight - A Lesson in Commerce

This is the story of how the Spanish Empire's fear of pirates in the 16th century led to a battle to develop a port for Los Angeles between two powerful shipping magnates from back east in the 19th. The Gold Rush, trade with Hong Kong, the Comstock Lode, all factor in. The characters in the story founded LA's railroad system, it's ports, made Santa Monica a resort town, and developed many suburbs in Orange and LA county. It's the story of almost everything and I'm only going to brush up against it. I stopped when I felt I'd filled in enough gaps, but I haven't even begun to cover everything.

I admitted last week to Crash Course World History being a huge source of inspiration. This week's episode is about the trade relationship between the Venetians and the Ottomans. Our handsome (married, darn it) host has taken us down the Silk Road, discussed the Indian Ocean trade routes, and now wants to talk about Venetian trade.

Venice, that series of islands in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean, was made for trade. It's easy for boats to get in and out of, so the Venetians became expert boat makers. They were importing pepper from Egypt and latter goods from the Ottoman Empire and from there they spread throughout Europe. 

This control of the Eastern spice trade was what led the Portuguese and Spanish to look for alternate trade routes. It was just such an adventure that led Columbus to try sailing West and landing in what he called the West Indies. 

Since these European trade routes came to define the modern Americas and Africa, they're kind of important. Brazil became the landing point for the Portuguese before the sailed "around the horn" of Africa. Another modern Portuguese speaking nation, Mozambique was stop number two, then it was off for India. 

For the Spanish, they stuck to that Western route out to Havana, Cuba. Veracruz and Acapulco in Mexico became important Spanish ports, and then the Spanish conquered the Philippines to give them an Eastern port in Manila. 

North America really wasn't a factor at this point, the Europeans were after the cool stuff the Ottoman Empire and Chinese were producing, because those places were so much cooler than Europe. 

Why did I run down all of that on a Los Angeles history blog? Well the Spanish eventually ventured north out of Mexico, and by that time their city founding policy had been shaped by their experiences with pirates. 

Surely you heard of pirates, they have that ride at Disneyland that pretty much sums it up. The Spanish were wealthy, and so there were pirates, in the Caribbean, who made it their business to be able to raid Spanish Galleons. 

So the Spanish came up with the Leyes de Indias or Laws of the Indies in 1573. One of these laws stipulated that Spanish New World Cities should be twenty miles from the sea, near a freshwater source, and close to a native tribe. 

The site eventually chosen for El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de la Porciuncula in 1781 is about thirty miles from Santa Monica Bay, pretty close to the Los Angeles river as well as near Yangna, a Togvas Indian tribe on the LA River.

Of course, the Los Angeles settlement was founded ten years after Mission San Gabriel Archangel was erected along the Rio Hondo, although along the Santa Ana River was the first choice. The Mission was founded as a stop along El Camino Real, before there was an attempt to found a city.

Which is all to say the inland location of Los Angeles is very much a reflection of the city's Spanish heritage. One only need to look at New Orleans or New York that had the English or French been the ones to originally settle California, downtown would probably extend from here.

Santa Monica Pier, 1877. Photo credit LAPL

That photo is of a pier built in Santa Monica by the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad. Railroad Tycoon was where I learned about railroad building of the second half of the 19th century, the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) probably being a well known example.

The LA&I was supposed to extend from Santa Monica Pier, to downtown Los Angeles, and on to Independence, CA - a small trade town in the Owens River Valley. The company was founded in 1875 and using mostly Chinese labor laid track between Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles.

Before I continue, one brief final note about the Laws of the Indies. Not only are they the reason downtown Los Angeles is thirty miles inland, they're also the reason the grid is tilted 36 degrees. These original streets comprise an area of four Spanish leagues square, you can see on a map of Los Angeles the streets at an angle. Where they go straight north and south is how you can tell the boundaries of the original city.

Now what happens next is very much a story of merchants and men with funny hats. Because the Spanish hadn't developed a major port near Los Angeles, the race was on as men from the East with Jeffersonian ideas tried to be the one to control LA's trade potential. The other entrant in the race was San Pedro.

Port of Los Angeles, 1924. Photo credit LAPL

The man spearheading the San Pedro-Wilmington initiative was Phineas Banning. While Santa Monica and Redondo Beach were natural harbors, San Pedro was too muddy to allow ships in port. The cargo either had to be unloaded, or the ship had to beach.

Phineas Banning arrived in Los Angeles in 1851 at the age of 21, having taken the journey from Wilmington, Delaware, across the isthmus of Panama, and up to California. Banning ran a stagecoach line from the sleeping fishing town of San Pedro up to Los Angeles, and used the profits to expand all over the Southwest. Staging wasn't the future, and Banning knew it. In 1868 he invested in rail lines to Los Angeles, the first to connect the two areas, as he sought to make San Pedro a shipping destination.

Colis Huntington was born in Harwington, Connecticut, but came out to Sacramento during the Gold Rush to make money as a merchant. Huntington, as well as another famous name Leland Stanford and others formed the Central Pacific Railroad to build the western half of the Transcontinental Railroad.

The Big Four involved with the Central Pacific Railroad later invested in the Southern Pacific Railroad. The first goal was traveling south, but in 1871 the SP was able to name their price for connecting Los Angeles with a southern transcontinental route across Texas into New Orleans. They wanted $600,000 cash, a wide right of way, 60 acres of downtown property, and Banning's 20 mile Los Angeles and San Pedro railroad, plus the link to the harbor.

Remember the LA&I railroad. That had been founded in 1874 by Nevada senator John P Jones. He made his money on the Comstock Lode, and completed his railroad in 1875. The SP went out of their way to undercut that business, and on July 4th, 1877, the SP acquired the tracks the LA&I had laid down.

Banning had dredged the San Pedro harbor in 1875, and built a breakwater in 1873. Even having to pay SP's prices to move his goods over land, by his death in 1885 the San Pedro port was doing 500,000 tons in shipping goods each year. Much of that was trade between San Pedro and British controlled Hong Kong. With the Panama Canal opening up soon, Los Angeles was going to explode as a trade port.

In anticipation, other groups laid track to the area around the San Pedro bay, angering Huntington. He went full in to the Santa Monica port, opening a long harbor in 1893. He named it the Port of Los Angeles, and strong armed area merchants into using Santa Monica or not be able to use his railroads. San Pedro was the customs center for Los Angeles, but Huntington had Santa Monica declared a sub port of entry.

Now up to this point, this was simply a case of two businesses going toe to toe. Huntington controlled the rails, Banning developed a port. When Huntington realized a free port would hurt his business, he set out to develop a private port. However, with the Panama Canal opening things were about to heat up.

Congress had concluded in 1890 that LA needed a deep water port necessary for handling large deep sea vessels. $4 million was allocated to build a breakwater. San Pedro and Santa Monica were the two developed cities, and thus were the two entries for the money. The city knew Huntington would only increase the power of his monopoly if Santa Monica were chosen, so they backed San Pedro.

The LA Times and it's publisher Harrison Otis (a key figure in the development of the San Fernando Valley) also sided with San Pedro, lest the government give funds to a single corporation. The Free Harbor Fight as it was called in the press saw the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce vs Huntington and the Southern Pacific. The Chamber of Commerce found a hero in Stephen M. White.

By the way, it's amazing to roll through all these names cause growing up by the port, they're everywhere but not many know who they are. Banning's house is now a museum, so he's pretty well known and the Wilmington High School is named after him. Stephen M. White got a middle school in Carson.

Anyhow, White filibustered for two days, damning the Southern Pacific's practices and amending the 1986 Rivers and Harbors bill to read that if Santa Monica were chosen, any railroad could connect for a nominal fee. The bill was adopted with this language, and in 1897 San Pedro was chosen by a team of engineers.

So in this battle, the funny hats won out over the merchant, but that'll happen in a democracy. After all, White was speaking for his constituents, the plurality, and Huntington had become a funny hatted Baron looking out only for himself.

I mentioned that Banning's family donated his mansion and drum barracks in Wilmington as a park and museum. The Huntington Library, a major research library, was donated by Colin Huntington's more benevolent nephew.

Henry Huntington operated the Los Angeles Pacific railway after his uncle had abandoned the line to the port. This combined with the Pasadena and Los Angeles railway to form the Pacific Electric Railway in 1901. The Red Cars of the PE became the dominant means of transport in Los Angeles until the advent of the freeway system in the 50s. The PE became so important to Los Angeles life, a small beach town south of LA sold it's naming rights to his land development company (Huntington Beach, natch)

As for San Pedro, it was annexed as well as 16 mile strip of land known as the Harbor strip and the city of Wilmington into the City of Los Angeles. This gives Los Angeles it's strange southern appendage. A long story full of intrigue that could have been avoided if it weren't for the Spanish being so afraid of pirates.

Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena - A Promise Ignored

I learned a few things writing that article about Dodger home stadia. First, that construction photos from newspapers are really cool. Because it's not just a photo, it's a photo that was used to tell a story and I love stories more than anything. With the Dodger Stadium construction photos, the focus seemed to be on access roads.

I was inspired to go see what other stadium construction photos sit in the LAPL newspaper archives, and I wasn't disappointed. I've written here about the LA Kings' history in Los Angeles, about the Pan Pacific Auditorium with a brief touch on the Sports Arena and Forum.

Today I'm going to try and dive into that latter history. Like the Dodgers, I feel sort of strange doing a history because they're so large. They've been in the spotlight so long, I feel like any stories I find to tell about them have already been told many times over.

Still, like Walter O'Malley last time, the story of how Jack Kent Cooke thumbed his nose at the City of LA is an interesting one. It's interesting to note just how many teams the City of LA had as tenants but ultimately chased away. The Dodgers, the Angels (AL), the Lakers, the Clippers, the Rams, the Raiders, UCLA football, and the Kings. Throw in the City of Pasadena and you can add the Galaxy.

Not that there was always conflict in those situations. I think ultimately most teams would rather own their own facility as opposed to renting, that way you can make improvements as you feel necessary and you don't have to worry about the city shoving other teams in. The Angels and Rams didn't last too long, the Giants and 49ers was always an uneasy relationship, the Raiders and A's aren't best buds.

Now, while building giant outdoor stadiums probably isn't in the best interest of a city, arenas are a different beast. Indoor venues can be used for conventions, concerts, rodeos, trade shows, you name it. The Pan Pacific Auditorium was one such venue, and the city of LA Junior Chamber of Commerce had plans to build a LA Civic Convention Hall between Grand and Broadway downtown back in 1935, the year the PPA opened.

Sports Arena under construction. Photo credit LAPL

Now as they were building the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1958-59, it was discovered that Los Angeles had been chosen to host the 1960 Democratic Convention. The city would be inundated with 17-18 thousand extra people and millions of extra dollars would flow into its coffers.

Photo credit LAPL

This photo has what they call the first and second tiers of permanent seats, but there's also a lower bowl still to be built. You can already tell the space their creating isn't going to be well lit or spacious. It's functional, I'll give them that.

So then, that 1960 Democratic convention was actually quite monumental as it's where John F. Kennedy finally won the Democratic nomination, and in a surprise move made his closest competitor Lyndon Johnson his running mate.

Now while Los Angeles had built itself a large convention and concert venue, just in time for stadium rock, the city did not yet have a NHL or NBA team. The NHL was still the big dog in arena sports, even though it was only in six cities at the time. The city had landed an NFL team a decade prior, which made sense as there were the fewest road games to schedule of any league. With the Dodgers moving west in 1958, LA was starting to turn into the west coast sports capital many imagined it would eventually be.

The Lakers began with the purchase of a disbanded NBL team, the Detroit Gems, in 1947. George Mikan led them to many championships, but retired in 1956. Attendance and performance plunged, leading to a sale of the team to an investment team led by Bob Short.

Things got so dire for Short that the league threatened contraction, and to move to team to a new location. Short decided to move to Los Angeles with the Sports Arena set to open in 1959. The league initially voted against the move, but when Short threatened to move to a rival league the near unanimous no vote became a unanimous yes vote. Again, merchants have the power not the rule makers wearing funny hats.

So the Lakers move into the Sports Arena for the 1960-61 season, and they've got Elgin Baylor now and fortunes are improving. Short's ownership group, which consisted of mostly Minnesota businessmen, was able to flip the Lakers for a then record $5,175,000 having purchased them for $200,000. Jack Kent Cooke was the man who bought them in 1965.

Before we talk about Cooke, we have to talk about the Western hockey league. Hockey was still king of arena sports back then, basketball just a seat filler in between home games. Indeed, when the Sports Arena was built, a hockey rink was part of the design despite LA not having a hockey team.

Sports Arena ice rink. Photo credit LAPL

LA had lost it's PCHL team the Los Angeles Monarchs when the league merged with the Western Canada Hockey League to form the Western Hockey League. Given that the Sports Arena was built with a hockey rink, from the day it opened it had been trying to gain an NHL franchise, and since it couldn't General Manager Bill Nichols announced intention to affiliate with the WHL. The Victoria Cougars ownership was transferred to Jim Piggott - a construction mogul from Saskatchewan - and Dan Reeves owner of the Los Angeles Rams.

Jack Kent Cooke was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1912. In 1941 he began to make his fortune buying radio stations and newspapers. In 1951 he made his first sports purchase, the minor league Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club. Cooke would be a major proponent of bringing major league baseball to Canada, putting in bids when teams went up for sale and even backing the Continental League which never played a game but did set of MLB expansion.

Now in 1961, Cooke purchased 25% of the Washington Redskins. As he was not an NFL majority owner, he was free to purchase other teams and did just that in 1965 buying the Lakers. However, as a Canadian Cooke's first love was hockey, so when the NHL announced the sale of six expansion teams in 1966 Cooke was first in line. His biggest competitor being the guys already running an LA hockey franchise, Piggott and Reeves with the Blades.

Jack Cooke at the Forum Construction site. The iconic columns are instantly recognizable. Photo credit LAPL

The NHL wanted an owner willing to build their own arena, so that they could set their own schedule. Cooke began work on building the Fabulous Forum, and the City of LA was left with a WHL franchise that would soon be irrelevant. As Cooke would move the Lakers into his arena, and change their colors, the Sports Arena would go from buzzing to empty in the space of eight years.

The Sports Arena eventually got a new basketball team. The rival ABA would begin with a franchise in Anaheim known as the Amigos. After one season they were sold, moved into the Sports Arena, and renamed the Los Angeles Stars. Two seasons later they'd move to Utah.

In 1970 the NBA expanded with the Portland Trailblazers, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Buffalo Braves. The Braves moved to San Diego in 78 and became the Clippers, and then the Clippers moved to Los Angeles in 1984. The Clippers would play in the Sports Arena for sixteen years before moving in with the Lakers and Kings.

The Sports Arena would even get hockey again. In 1972 LA was given World Hockey Association team called the LA Sharks that would last two seasons before moving to Detroit. In 1995 San Diego's minor league hockey team moved north to become the Los Angeles Ice Dogs. After just one season, the Ice Dogs moved down the 710 freeway to Long Beach.

In the case of all those franchises, they would occasionally have to play games in Long Beach due to schedule conflicts at the Sports Arena. Which is exactly what the NHL feared. Now, technology has improved now to where Staples Center downtown can host doubleheaders, even with two different sports.

The Sports Arena got to host plenty of hockey and basketball and concerts over the years, but after starting out on such a good foot it was effectively destroyed by the NHL. Cooke's arena became the beloved one in Los Angeles, especially after the Laker championships of the 80s. Then when AEG bought the Kings, they built their own vision of Staples Center and adjacent Nokia Center. Now AEG is looking to build an NFL stadium on the same site. All of those things sound better than the arena the city of Los Angeles built.

Dodger Home Ballparks - A History

So one of my favorite video series' in the whole wide webaverse is Crash Course World History.  Not only is the subject matter interesting, but the host is a charming fellow with an amusing way of telling a story. As an underemployed journalist and an amateur historian, that's all I really want to do. Find something interesting to talk about, and then talk about it in an amusing way. Kind of like teaching, but without the rigid pedantic formality.

Anyhow, one of the things Crash Course said in it's last World History episode is that history is often told through the people with funny hats, but what happened amongst the people is usually way more interesting. Merchant history, the history of how things were traded between places necessitating roads and increasing wealth among the polity, is way more interesting that who claimed to be ruling whom.

Local history is full of funny hat people, they put their names on our parks and on subway stations. They have passed laws and enacted ordinances, but as Crash Course World History points out, there's anyways some city nearby willing to lower taxes to take your business away. The LA film industry knows this all too well. So less interesting that who is in charge, is who were they trying to attract.

That's been my focus here since I've drifted away from phone numbers and roads. In talking about Hollywood it was the people who moved in, not the laws that made, that makes the Hollywood story so interesting.

I've talked before about Wrigley Field in South LA, and today I want to talk about all the things that had to happen for a man in New York to turn LA Wrigley Field into Dodger Stadium. I may have glanced against it in my Wrigley Field article, but here's the whole tamale. The fun part is how it's a great example of the people with funny hats needing merchants, and not the other way around.

So Charles Ebbets became the full owner of the Dodgers in 1902 when they were known as the Superbas. In 1912, Ebbets financed the building of Ebbets Field by selling half his shares to the McKeever brothers. In 1925 Ebbets died, and a trust controlled his shares of the Dodgers (although they were known as the Robins at that point). The nickname wasn't as important then as it is now, those Brooklyn teams wore an old english B on their chest at home, and Brooklyn spelled across the front on the road.

It wasn't until 1932 that the Dodgers (short for trolley dodgers, for the trolleys you had to dodge to get the Ebbets field) became the teams official nickname and became the first nickname to grace the Brooklyn franchise's uniforms.

This switch is actually important. Once the team was branded by a nickname and not by the place where they play, it's much easier to think of as a business, and relocation is a part of business. Manchester United couldn't up stakes and move to London, but if the UK had gone like the US and put Red Devils on all the official merchandise, then it's a bit easier to see.

So in 1942, Walter O'Malley is brought in as the Dodger's attorney. At this point, Ebbet's field is thirty years old. Two years later, O'Malley became a minority owner and by 1950 he was president and chief stockholder. There's a bunch of business stuff and rivalry stuff that happened in that six year period, but that's boring.

What's interesting is that in 1956, O'Malley sold Ebbets Field to Marvin Kratter and agreed to lease the stadium for three years. Given that the Dodgers moved west in 1957, clearly something happened.

Attendance for the Dodgers in the mid fifties, with Ebbets Field forty some years old and the cultural makeup of Brooklyn dramatically shifting, had fallen about 700,000 from what it was in the 40s. O'Malley wanted to build elsewhere in Brooklyn, but he ran into an opponent in Robert Moses.

Moses wasn't a funny hat man, he held no political office, but he had plenty of influence and access to plenty of city funds. Instead of running for office, Moses controlled several public benefit corporations. The corporations then built things like the Triborough Bridge and the Brooklyn Battery Bridge.

Moses favored cars over trains, and was against O'Malley's plan to build a ballpark at Flatbush and Atlantic at the end of the Long Island Railroad. That centralized real estate would be better served by a parking structure in a car based city, Moses felt, and would rather a large sports stadium be placed way out in Flushing Meadows, Queens; a former World's Fair site.

O'Malley, successful merchant that he was, did not bow to the wishes of a quasi-government official. The Dodgers had picked up the Portland Beavers of the PCL as a AAA affiliate in 1956 (the PCL at this time was an open classification league, limiting the rights of major league teams to draft players off the team). At that year's Winter Meetings, O'Malley and Cubs owner Wrigley swapped teams putting the Los Angeles Angels under O'Malley's care.

Following the 1957 MLB season, O'Malley moved the LA Angels to Spokane where they became the Spokane Indians. To provide some continuity, he kept the interlocking LA logo for his Dodger's caps (still in use today) as he took his Brooklyn Dodgers (who no longer owned Ebbets Field remember) and moved them to Los Angeles. Later, he sold the Angels name to Gene Autry to use for his American League Los Angeles baseball club.

Fans holds a sign welcoming the Dodgers outside of Wrigley Field. Photo credit LAPL

The one ballpark O'Malley did own was Wrigley Field as part of the purchase of the Angels. So it was assumed that the Dodgers would move in right away. There were even plans on how to expand Wrigley Field. On February 28th, 1957, while the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn but had bought the Angels and announced their intentions, this rendering of a 60k seater version of Wrigley Field ran in the Examiner. 

Photo credit: Los Angeles Public Library

Pretty blah, right? I mean you'd still have the super cool clock tower, but otherwise it's no better than any of the other concrete doughnuts that were about to go in vogue. O'Malley wasn't the only one who wanted to replace his stadium built before the first Great War. 

So O'Malley moves his team out after the 1957 season, doesn't really know where he's going to play yet. An article in the Jan 27th, 1958 issue of Time magazine says there were four considerably different final offers made in five days of negotiation with the City of Los Angeles. Finally they settled on the LA Coliseum at $200,000 per year for 1958 and 59, plus 10% of the gate and all the concession profits from the first nine games of the season after an annual opening series against the San Francisco Giants. The Coliseum sat 101,528 and wasn't built with baseball in mind so the dimensions were quite colorful. 

LA Coliseum with baseball diamond squeezed inside. Photo credit LAPL

As you can see, it was an ungraceful squeeze. A fence had to go up along that short left field, and centerfield is marked by a short fence with plenty of green behind it. Fans sort of just fade out after the foul poles, with no centerfield seating to speak of. In the background that's the LA Sports Arena that opened in July of 59, with the Lakers beginning play there in 1960. Lakers, Dodgers, and Rams all in one complex. 

The Dodgers won the World Series in 1959, playing their home games in that gigantic facility. They'd stay there for two more seasons while work was done in building the Dodgers a permanent home. But where they decided to build that home takes a bit of rewinding of the history machine. 

In 1949, the men in funny hats at the US capitol passed the Housing Act of 1949. This, put simply, gave local governments funds to build housing projects. It was also money for urban renewal, so instead of building out in flat suburban areas cities demolished minority housing and rebuilt new public housing projects. And because of corruption, it wasn't even always used for housing, as seen in New York's Lincoln Center. 

So in the early 50s, Los Angeles like many other cities across the US used eminent domain to kick out the most hispanic inhabitants of Chavez Ravine to build a complex with two dozen 13 story buildings. The Dodgers weren't even a twinkle in Los Angeles' eye yet. 

However, a new mayor in 1953 was against these public housing projects and bought the land back from the Federal Housing Authority. This meant LA had hundreds of acres of developable land right in the center of the city, but the stipulation was it had to be used for a public purpose.

In 1958 they were approached by Walter O'Malley with a purpose. Proposition B was put on the ballot on June 13th, 1958 to approve or disprove a deal that came out of the talks O'Malley had with the City of Los Angeles referenced above. O'Malley would trade his Wrigley Field property for the 300 acres at Chavez Ravine. 

Take a look at the oppositions argument. The Dodgers were locked into the Coliseum already, and of course renovating Wrigley Field was still an option. The deal with the City would not only have LA deed over the land, but pay for the building of infrastructure around the Stadium. Roads and freeway off ramps and all sorts of work would have to be done to make the site viable. 

The City would get no rent, gate receipts, nothing from advertising or radio rights. It's hard not to see this as a raw deal for Los Angeles. However, the City didn't have the leverage. They wanted the Dodgers to stay, and there was nothing keeping O'Malley from shipping off for Seattle or Minnesota or some such after two years. The City wanted the prestige of a Major League team, more than the team wanted to be in that specific city. 

Construction of Dodger Stadium. Photo credit LAPL

This photo from the Examiner collection, dated Feb 25th, 1961. You can see the areas just outside the stadium labeled parking. Off the hill is labeled Hollywood, which I believe is the Hollywood Freeway. There are high rises off in the background, but nothing like the financial center skyscrapers that tower off the hill now.

The area labeled two is what would eventually become the field, and one points out the various levels being carved out in the hill. One of the unique elements to Dodger Stadiums construction is that your ticket would correspond to a parking lot that would be right up against your entry gate. So instead of parking in the city, entering and walking up to your seat; one literally drives right up to their seat. It's this hillside construction that makes that possible.

Construction continues. Photo credit LAPL

We come in again in 1962. The stadium has taken shape, and now it's time to pave the parking lots and build the access roads. The LA River and the Golden State Freeway are up top, Silver Lake in the other corner. Solano ave leading up to the Police Academy is now known as Academy road, and that entrance the Academy gate.

Chavez Ravine Road is now Stadium Way, Elysian Park ave. leads back to Sunset Boulevard making that the Sunset gate. The naval armory labeled there is now a training facility for the fire department. The downtown gate would be built off the Pasadena Freeway.

Walter O'Malley in front of almost completed Dodger Stadium. Photo credit LAPL

Fifty years later and Dodger Stadium is celebrating it's 50th anniversary. Still pretty much the same as it was in 1962. There's less foul territory now, but it's still as O'Malley drew it up all those years ago. Mayors in New York and Los Angeles have come and gone. But one merchant's legacy lives on.

Before I finish, don't mistake this article as an argument for Laisez Faire business with no regulations. My only point is that the things that make us sentimental about Los Angeles were built by private individuals who wanted to do something great. Dodger Stadium, Griffith Park, Disneyland...these things exist because of the visions of the people who lived here, not because the people in charge wanted to something great for it's citizens.

Movie productions continue to happen in Los Angeles despite the heavy taxation, not because of it. Cities need money to build roads and maintain police and fire departments. Taxes are a good thing. But no city should forget there's always a neighbor willing to let your merchants do their thing for less.

Heck, it's called Anaheim, and it took Disneyland, the Angels, and the Rams. None of this is good or bad, it's just what is. The merchants influence the city scape more than the people in charge. As a result, the merchants are far more interesting.

The Los Angeles Kings - A History

With the Los Angeles Kings in the Stanley Cup finals for the second time in their history, I thought it time to look back at one of the NHL's first expansion franchises. I've talked here before about the Los Angeles Monarchs, who played at the Pan Pacific Auditorium and inspired the naming of LA's NHL franchise. The Monarchs are still the only Los Angeles hockey franchise to win a title, the President's Cup of the Pacific Coast Hockey League.

The Monarchs folded in 1950, along with the PCHL's Southern Division, but with the opening of the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1959 LA was able to enter the Western Hockey League as the Los Angeles Blades in 1961. The Blades shared the Sports Arena with the Lakers.

Much like MLB coming west in 1959 thwarting the PCL's bid to become a major league, the NHL began to feel threatened by the WHL in the 60s. It was time for these so called National Leagues to expand to the West coast as the NFL had way back in 1946.

The NFL, MLB, and NBA all initially expanded when east coast owners sought breathing room on the west coast and moved out. However, the NHL was just a six team league at the time with firmly entrenched fan bases, so it would have to expand its footprint with expansion franchises.

The Los Angeles Kings were one of six expansion franchises announced in 1967, the others being the California Seals (a nod to Bay Area PCL franchise San Francisco Seals), Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and St. Louis Blues.

The two West Coast teams were an aim not only to stop the WHL's influence, but the NHL had lost its TV contract with CBS so placing a team near Television City in Los Angles wasn't a bad idea. Coincidentally, CBS Television City is built on the former Pan Pacific Auditorium site where the Monarchs skated for a decade.

Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke had bought the Lakers in 1965 from Bob Short, who bought the Lakers in the 40s and moved them out of Minnesota where hockey was more popular. He paid $5 million for the Lakers, who were one of the NBA's most popular teams due to their rivalry with the Celtics.

Cooke paid $2 million to the NHL for the expansion franchise, which he named the Kings. Cooke wanted the Kings to play in the Sports Arena with the Lakers, but the Coliseum commission who run the Sports Arena already had an agreement with the WHL LA Blades. So to house both his franchises he built The Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, and dressed both teams in the purple and gold of royalty (the Laker name was too valuable to change).

Los Angeles King's second ever game, against expansion Minnesota North Stars at Long Beach Arena. Photo credit Los Angeles Public Library. 

However, the Forum wasn't ready in time for the 1967 NHL season. The Kings began their existence at the Long Beach Arena which was built in 1962 as part of a convention center. Interestingly, that was the second arena built on the site, as Long Beach built the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium and Rainbow Pier in 1932

Sorry for getting sidetracked, that's just a really awesome looking auditorium. It appears it was used mostly for concerts and the like, where as the Long Beach Arena was intended to be a sports and concert venue. 

So the Kings played their first game at Long Beach Arena against the expansion Pittsburgh Penguins, which they won 4-2. The photo above is of their second game, also against an expansion team. The LB Arena is much more intimate, and you can see in the photo that the NHL at the time was in the practice of dark jerseys at home (this would switch, and then back again in the future). The Kings wore all purple at home that first year, with a gold and white crown logo. 

The Kings also played some home games at the Sports Arena, and two months into the season the Forum was completed. The Kings finished second in the West, which was made up entirely of expansion teams. However they barely qualified for the playoffs the following year, then did not qualify for four straight years. 

By the time the Kings made the playoffs again, the NHL had added four more clubs to combat yet another competitor the World Hockey Association. This East coast and Canada based league necessitated the Vancouver Canucks, New York Islanders and Buffalo Sabres, as well as the Atlanta Flames. The league chose to put Vancouver in the East (so they could play Canadian teams), and Atlanta in the west taking the Chicago Blackhawks (one of the original six) with them to build rivalry with the nearby Minnesota North Stars (which wouldn't keep Minnesota from eventually moving). 

All this meant that by the time the Kings could make the playoffs again, they were quickly eliminated by experienced Chicago. The NHL restructured again in 1974, which put the Kings in a division with the Canadiens, and Red Wings.

The Kings wouldn't catch a break until they traded for Wayne Gretzky in 1988. Gretzky had won four Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers, so the Canadian's arrival in Los Angeles was a huge deal and upset a lot of Canadians.

Gretzky would lead the Kings to their only Stanley Cup appearance before this one in 2012. The team changed their purple and gold color scheme, which had become solely associated with the great Laker teams of the 80s, and adopted the black and silver scheme of the Los Angeles Raiders.

The Kings brought back the purple after moving into the Staples Center built by new owners AEG. However, they brought back the black and white this season, and goalkeeper Jonathan Quick has been hot throughout the playoffs. So good luck and go Kings!

Wrigley Field Hosts US vs. England Soccer

The year was 1959. The Dodgers had just moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, which meant the Los Angeles Angels left town for Arizona. This left Wrigley Field in South Los Angeles unoccupied. In May of 1959, with the first LA Dodger season taking place up the road at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the US National soccer team took on the English soccer team in a friendly match at Wrigley Field, which really must have been a hoot.

I just learned of this event, thanks to the LA Times LA History blog. For a bit of context, in 1950 the US had upset England at the World Cup in Brazil 1-0. Back then it was just two points for a victory, as it still is in hockey, and that was the US' only victory in the tournament so they didn't make it out of their group. Only the top team from each of four groups was taken, with a final group round instead of a knockout stage to decide the winner. England didn't make it out of the group either.

Europe hosted the next two World Cups, and then the 1962 World Cup was set to be hosted by Chile. This meant England needed some experience abroad again, which facilitated the 1959 tour. The English started in Brazil (lost 2-0) then to Peru (lost 4-1) and on to Mexico (lost 2-1).

It was the start (or at least the first instance I've seen) of Los Angeles being the defacto soccer capital of the United States. At the very least, it was the first time a European national team had come to Los Angeles. Before then, New York was the destination port for European clubs for obvious reasons.

The English practiced at Hollywood High School, and was headquartered at the Hollywood Roosevelt. As for Wrigley Field, which had been deemed too small for Major League Baseball, was transformed into a soccer pitch; hastily. The dirt of the baseball paths was still down, and sat in front of one of the goals making things difficult for everyone.

There's an excellent writeup of the match here. About 10,000 fans in attendance which would be about half full at Wrigley Field. The US, wearing navy blue kits, scored first, but then England came back with a staggering eight goals.    

Just look at glorious Wrigley Field. To be fair, any ballpark can look glorious in the sun. It is quite compact, I imagine the soccer pitch must have been quite a tight fit. When Wrigley Field in Chicago has done soccer matches, the length of the pitch is along the first base line, mostly in the outfield. The base path does overlap onto one of the corners almost touching the goal, so that seems to give with the description in the blog.