14. Tales of the Los Angeles Parks.
Palm
Desert, CA: Best West, 1996.
At five square miles, Griffith Park is the largest municipal park in the United States. Although Griffith Park has to be navigated with a car, Politi has emphasized its pedestrian character, showing families strolling around the Los Angeles Zoo before its major remodeling in the 1990s. The hilly chaparral, which was originally part of the Rancho Los Feliz, was donated to the city as a "place of recreation and rest for the masses, a resort for the rank and file" in 1896. The motives behind this benefaction may not have been entirely philanthropic: The parcel was said to be cursed and the owner Griffith J. Griffith had been unable to sell it!
