Visited Flat Top Park
Over the last week, after visiting Elephant hill, I did a tour of various hilltop parks in Northeast LA.
A reader of this blog actually emailed me and suggested that I check out Flat Top Park. It's another hilltop road system where some of the property is formally a park... and some of the property is privately-owned, very steep, and only partially-developed.
Getting to Flat Top Park feels a lot less like breaking the law than Elephant Hill does. I parked in Lincoln Heights and walked a significant distance uphill to get there, along the path of the green arrow. I saw three or four other people approaching it the same way I did. However, I also saw a bunch of people walking in from Montecito Heights, along the path of the blue arrow.
That's another big difference - I saw a lot of people here, including several runners, a dog walker, and a couple on a date. The road network up here is a lot simpler, so everyone gets funneled into the same spots, and it's a lot harder to feel like you're completely alone in the middle of nowhere.
You get to the park by walking along the long U-shaped road at the top of the hill. So from where I entered, you'd walk this way, with incredible views of downtown LA the entire way:
It's been really interesting to me how every hilltop I visit in NELA has a different combination of plants. Elephant Hill was absolutely covered in black mustard, but the access road to Flat Top Park was completely surrounded by wild oats and cheeseweed mallows, and had comparatively little mustard. Some of these parks are completely covered in castor bean plants, while others have only a couple. All of these plants are, of course, invasive. Here's what a bunch of oats and mallow look like:
The closer you get to the proper "park" property, the more native plants you'll see - there are a string of plantings along the roadside with educational signage next to them. There's also much more of the symbolic park infrastructure you'd expect from a public park here, like stump fences, public noticeboards, and picnic tables.
It takes about a mile of walking into undeveloped land before you'll see any of that park stuff, though. The land that comprises the actual park was only formally opened as a park in April of last year. It's still easy to find posts online from before the park was established, referring to it as a "secret" spot that "isn't really a park."
There's definitely people living along the access road to the park. On that mile walk, I passed a couple structures which were definitely houses, with driveways connected to the dirt road. People living up here could be accessing it from several different directions - they could be driving up from Lincoln Heights, Happy Valley, or even driving around the back of the radio tower from Montecito Heights - I really have no idea. There's something pretty surreal about parking on a high-traffic arterial road, walking uphill for thirty minutes, spending ten minutes strolling through grassland, then suddenly finding what looks like a lived-in home on a dirt road at the top of a hill.
There's also some property up here that's just trailers, trucks, or sheds in the middle of nowhere. I decided not to walk down and take a closer look at the most dilapidated stuff on Fenn Street because, on my mission to bike every road in West LA, the only places I've ever been chased by dogs in LA are cul-de-sacs. Sometimes, you just look at a cul-de-sac and think, "This looks like the place a psycho might sic a German Shepherd on me." I'd been up there long enough for the sun to start going down, so I elected to just head back to my car.
But, I gotta say: I can see why people who own random land on the top of the hill might put a completely dilapidated trailer there for no good reason, because it's a stunning view. Here's what I saw from "Flat Top Park" itself:
That low hill to the right of the downtown skyline is the area containing Elysian Park and Dodger Stadium. The valley in between me and the hill contains the A Line light rail. Lincoln Heights is the main neighborhood in the foreground of the shot.
Here's the opposite view:
I have a bunch of other pictures from Flat Top and other NELA parks I took this week, but I figure I'll stick em all in one blog post later on. It's very interesting to look at all these downtown skyline shots from different angles.
One of those pictures I'll post later has a fleck of the goddamn ocean peeking through the buildings in the skyline. It's pretty crazy.
Out of all the parks I visited in the last week, I think this one had the best mix of... mysterious undeveloped land vibes, and proper park infrastructure and safety. There's lots of people here, it's very chill, and it just feels like the kind of place I'd be walking if I were back home where I grew up, in New England: a dirt road that takes you around the back of a bunch of weird houses.
It's just weirder because it's Los Angeles, right? The appeal that a lot of these undeveloped NELA hilltops provide is the shock of contrast. Ballona, Griffith, Franklin, and other well-funded parks in the area feel like parks. These places just feel like neutral territory, and getting a park made here at all seems like it was a herculean effort.
I'm a strong supporter of infill development near transit. I wish it were easier for cities like LA to recognize that - at this advanced stage of sprawl - we should build as densely as possible near transit and upzone as much of the city as possible, but leave the remaining never-developed property we still have in the city undeveloped. I've been reading a lot about the groups that oppose development on these hilltops, and though it seems like their politics are pretty different from mine, I do appreciate what they've been able to do in the specific places they're targeting. It's just one of those things that make you reflect on how difficult land use politics really are.
Anyway, this is one I recommend checking out! I'll be doing other posts soon about the other parks I visited. At this point, I think I've been to all but one of the hilltop parks I can get to in this part of the city...