Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eagle Rock is a 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 is a center of hipster culture in Los Angeles. With an "Any Town 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 the last episode for season two of The O.C. It also boasts a significant Filipino population. Eagle Rock High School is among the highest ranking schools in the LAUSD. In 2006 ERHS was ranked in the top 400 high schools in the United States.
St. Dominic school is a Catholic Elementary School located in Eagle Rock. St. Dominic is a parish school that has Kindergarten through eighth grade.
Eagle Rock is also home to a public charter school, the Renaissance Arts Academy located in a former department store. RenArts is "a small Music and Performing Arts school providing an integrated classical education for middle and high school students from all backgrounds".
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 1880's 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 1950's, 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 psudeonym 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.
Education
Elementary Schools
- Delevan Drive Elementary
- Eagle Rock Elementary
- Dahlia Heights Elementary
- Rockdale Elementary
- St. Dominic School [1]
- Toland Way Elementary
Middle & High Schools
College
Churches St. Dominic Parish [2]
[edit] Famous Residents
Actresses Madeleine Stowe and Marley Shelton are natives of Eagle Rock. John Steinbeck lived on Campus Road in the 1920s while teaching at Occidental College. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote Good Will Hunting while living in a home on Hill Drive in Eagle Rock. 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)
- Virginia Weidler (child star)
- Yvor Winters (literary critic)
[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)
