Playa del Rey Lagoon Park (Los Angeles, California)

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  dukehometownnewsyahoo (guest)

  History records that June 2, 1924 was the date that The United States Congress granted citizenship and voting rights to all Native Americans. Of course it is odd that we would have to pass national legislation granting citizenship to the original inhabitants of this land, but that remains our legacy. Others things happened too. On that foggy moonless night , the banks of The Del Rey Lagoon; the former site of a Native American Tongva Village, were dry and parched—as 1924 was one of the driest years in Los Angeles recorded history. About 11PM, the Pacific Electric “Red” Streetcar made its last stop for the evening, at the present day intersection of Vista Del Mar and Culver Boulevards in Playa Del Rey. One passenger exited the trolley, carrying two five- gallon tin cans or coal oil, and made her way silently across the sandy lagoon shoreline towards the former site of the Del Rey Hotel—now a school for girls. The area was unlit, and on a moonless night she was nearly invisible to locals. Previously the site of The Del Rey Lagoon Pavilion and Amusements and the failed Port Ballona, the area had been devastated. As times and tastes changed just prior to the First World War, the town's tourist facilities were damaged or destroyed by nature. A large portion of the fishing pier collapsed in July 1911 and again in July 1917. Tide gates, which maintained high water in the lagoon, had to be dynamited during a heavy winter rainstorm because nearby Venice and the vast flat ground between became flooded. Soon the grandstands were torn down and sand choked the boat course. The pavilion burned before the war, and the Del Rey Hotel, which had become a house of prostitution, was shuttered in 1917, as angry Los Angeleno’s forced its closure. Site of the Del Rey Hotel, 1908, and location of the street car stop: near present day Vista Del Mar. In 1924, The lagoon waters had already receded back to near the front of the hotel. But the building reopened as The Hope Development School for Retarded Children (for girls), in about 1920—with Mrs. J C Thomas as the Matron. The area was off the beaten path, and the doors and windows were routinely locked at night. Also, the children’s bedrooms were bolted from the outside to keep them from roaming the halls. A 1930’s era view of the Lagoon area: the former site of the Del Rey Hotel. The recalcitrant 14-year-old old Josephine Bertholme, mentally challenged and recently expelled from the school for continued violent acts; and who was living alone in a Sawtelle area day-room, struggled with the cans of volatile coal oil as she approached the hotel. Bertholme first checked that the front door was indeed locked, and doused the dry and decaying wooden porch with one can of oil, and then headed to the back porch; and emptied the contents of the second can. After igniting the fire, she moved across the street to sit on a sand dune, at what is now Toes Beach--and watched the blaze. In the end, 22 girls would perish in the fire, along with Mrs. Thomas and her young adopted son, who was asleep in a crib at the foot of her bed. Mistress Lola May Rademaker did manage to rescue 19 screaming children, who sat in the sand in charred night-clothes; many of them badly burned, and who also watched in complete horror as the structure burned to the ground. Many of the survivors would later report seeing Bertholme, “laughing at the destruction from across the road.” Leaving the fire by walking down to Venice Beach, Bertholme would confess to the killings two weeks later. I could find no record of her fate; neither in public records or libraries nor on the Internet. The charred bodies of the 24 victims were removed from the ashes the next day, and stacked like kindling-wood on the dunes. For four days; swelling in the heat, the bodies awaited the City of Los Angeles Coroner’s Office to send a truck or a wagon to remove them. At Del Rey/ American Little League; a slugger hitting a home run to left field. There is an old local legend, which claims a Tongvan Chief put a curse on the area, when the Europeans stole their sacred land; even changing the tribes name to Gabrielino, and decimating their culture. At any rate, it would take another 20 years before development began in earnest at Playa Del Rey and Westchester. The street cars stopped running, and the whole event, like the town, slipped into obscurity. But from Del Rey/American Little Leagues’ Krauch Field, near the site of the disaster: one of the largest losses of life in Los Angeles history, you can see the former site of the hotel marked by a few trees and a picnic area--just past left field. It is now known as Del Rey Lagoon Park.

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