Los Angeles State Historic Park (The Cornfield) (Los Angeles, California)

 park, artwork, railroad yard, historic landmark

1245 N. Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

In its earliest incarnation, the Tongva village of Yang-va was located near the Cornfield. After the Spaniards arrived, two channels of the Zanja Madre ran through the site. The zanja served as the irrigation system for the budding Los Angeles pueblo.

The Southern Pacific railroad later purchased the site in 1873, transforming it into the River Station yard by adding warehouses, tracks, switch houses, and cobblestone pavement. SP abandoned and sold the 32 acre site to the state of California in 1992.
When SP's River Station opened to passenger traffic in 1875, it was the terminus of the transcontinental rail line that ended in Los Angeles. Some historians have described the site as the "Ellis Island of L.A."

Chinese laborers who helped build the transcontinental railroad created Los Angeles' original Chinatown about a mile south of the SP rail yard, near the Santa Fe yard, an area now known as the Arts District.

Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts here at the site of first train station to connect Los Angeles to the rest of the nation (predating the present Union Station. Scientists have uncovered redwood beams used to build the foundation of the station's turntable, which rotated trains between tracks. They also excavated artifacts from the station's roundhouse, which housed and repaired locomotives, as well as the foundation for industrial shops.

The archaeologists knew from sonar that these artifacts were buried underneath the park, but this was the first time a full excavation had been done at these three sites. The site, near Dodger Stadium, had been home to railroad tracks from 1875 to the 1990s, when the tracks were removed. The lot was to be converted into an industrial warehouse, but those plans faced opposition from activists who preferred a park. The dispute ended when the state purchased the site for $36 million in 2001 and opened a temporary park in 2006, with plans underway to design the entire property.

This site was once home to the Pacific Hotel, which opened in 1879 and served "25-minute meals" to station passengers. A line of recycled glass now marks the boundary of that hotel.

The panoramic photo above shows the abandoned Southern Pacific yard as it appeared in 2004, while it was still just a huge vacant lot.

In 2005 the cleaned up site was turned into an actual corn field as a living sculpture by artist Lauren Bon. The title of the piece was "Not A Cornfield."

www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=22272
bigorangelandmarks.blogspot.com/2007/11/no-82-river-sta...
www.sppsr.ucla.edu/dup/research/Section3_ii.pdf
Cornfield Yard while still active: www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=148373
www.notacornfield.info