Over a century ago , the California Cycleway promised an high-flown , dedicated bicycle path from Los Angeles to the nearby city of Pasadena . In this excerpt from the new bookLAtitudes : An Angeleno ’s Atlas , source Dan Koeppel tracks its path through Southern California — and discovers why it was never finished .
Horace M. Dobbins dunk the shovel into the ground . It was November 1899 , and in the decade since he ’d arrived in Southern California , the Philadelphia native had become a salient citizen in Pasadena , the metropolis of which he would later be elected city manager . But for now , the thirty - one - year - old entrepreneur was launching what he believed would be a radical and lucrative speculation .
“ The globe turns , ” he intone , tossing a bunch of dirt to the side , “ and we turn over the globe . ”
The crew jolly up . Bugles peal out . Within a year , Dobbins forebode , something similar to Columbus ’s brusk route to the Orient would uprise above the hills of the Los Angeles basin . His “ Cycleway ” was designed to swiftly and conveniently transport people between a couple of central urban centers : the old colonial plaza in Downtown Los Angeles , and Pasadena , the burgeoning , modern suburbia to the north that then rival the older city in size of it and aspiration . The Dobbins route — which neatly anticipate and presaged the automotive freeways that now stretch along across the region — would be a modern marvel . It would feature a state - of - the - graphics toll - collecting organization . It would be elevated fifteen foot above the ground ; the special entree would ensure that dealings flow smoothly . “ It can be said , ” wrote the Los Angeles Times of the ground breaking , “ that none of the novel Southern California enterprises will … be more sure of fiscal success . The wheel must have a path of its own between these two cities . ”
In the yr leading up to the twentieth hundred , the idea that such a rack would be a bicycle ’s was not surprising : There was no alternative . America was in the midst of a massive motorcycle microphone boom . Over 3,000 American cycle manufacturers were founded in the final decade of the 1800s . Tens of 1000 of bike clubs were take form , particularly in Southern California , while mild weather condition made the activity a twelvemonth - round pursuit .
One of the few photographs of the short segment of the Cycleway that was completed in 1900
farm horse began build , promise that the entire thoroughfare — nine miles long and studded with diversions , amusements , and place of repose — would be complete within two years . For a while , it looked like he ’d succeed . The only surviving photographs of the Cycleway ’s first discussion section show something resembling an idyll ; the boardwalk - corresponding trail curves lightly beneath shimmering mandrel . A more hardscrabble image render the Cycleway reaching majestically above dilapidated homes and dust - laden Earth’s surface roads . But the most telling pic is one that implies not how airy the project — or its founding father , who is the subject of that photograph — was , but how quickly it all went awry .
The localisation of the northernmost piece of the Cycleway , the path ’s first section , the one boast in those 12 or so extant painting , is easiest to find . That ’s because mass of landmarks seen in those range are still there . But the further one gets from the route ’s Pasadena start point , the harder it is to follow the Cycleway ’s way of life or find any tracing of it . I decide the best thing to do would be to begin in Pasadena , on foot , and head south . I carried along a copy of B. O. Kendall ’s prescribed City of Pasadena Real Estate Guide , print in 1900 . The Cycleway is one of the map ’s most outstanding feature , depicted with a thick twofold line , the same naming used for railway and major streets .
In addition to the quondam map , I was defend a photograph [ provide ] of the Cycleway ’s Pasadena bulge out point ( or end point , depending on your direction of travel ) , where Dobbins had erected a tolbooth .
Raising the persona , it was promiscuous to square it with a building that still stands , or at least partially suffer , just in the south of the metropolis ’s furbish up “ Old Town ” shopping dominion . At the end of the nineteenth one C , there was no more elegant place to drop the Nox in Pasadena than theCastle Green , which opened a few months before Dobbins broke ground . During those early day , the hotel consist of mirror - ikon Moorish social organisation , connected by a footbridge . In 1924 , the eastern building was demolished . Today , the persist body structure is part of a condominium complex , though it retains the oddness of the original design . The photograph I held depict the Cycleway and the exit stall , high above the ground , nearly dead - end into the hotel ’s brick frontage .
From the Castle Green , the Cycleway extended to the south , according to the map , parallel a solidification of railway tracks . Those tracks were once used as the approach to Los Angeles for the transcontinental lines function by the Atchison , Topeka , and Santa Fe Railroad . They ’ve been hard modify in the past hundred year , but the same canonical right field - of - path today fit the Metro Gold Line , part of a regional weak - track organization that began operating in 2003 . The law of proximity of the Cycleway to the railroad gives a hint of Dobbins ’s marketing strategy . It would n’t be enough , he knew , to offer an unimpeded journeying between the cities at both last of the Cycleway . The thoroughfare would also have to connect subsist , establish attractions . About a mil to the south of Castle Green digest the establishment ’s main rival , South Pasadena ’s Raymond Hotel . The facility was built by railway mogul Walter Raymond and offered two hundred rooms to accommodate “ especial people”—well - heeled rider who require to bathe , unlax , and refresh after the recollective journeying across America .
The elevated Cycleway trip above the railway and unpaved street of the metropolis , show here passing Pasadena ’s Grand Opera House in 1902
dobbin saw Raymond ’s inn as the perfect “ 2nd loss ” on the Cycleway , and set up a tolbooth directly in front of the hotel ’s driveway ( in his business design , Dobbins anticipate that he ’d garner about $ 30,000 annually in bell , adequate to about $ 2 million today ) . Walking from the Castle , it train thirty hour to reach the Raymond site , where only a single structure hold out , the caretaker ’s bungalow where Walter Raymond and his married woman , humbled by the ruinous loss of the Great Depression , lived out their day .
From the Raymond , Dobbins ’s wooden boardwalk turned shortly west , curving into a lumberyard build to process the K of feet of oak planks needed to build up the grand structure . It cross through Lincoln Park , once an autonomous townspeople that ’s since been engross by South Pasadena , before reach the Arroyo Seco . The Kendall function demonstrate the Cycleway extending from there to the Cawston Ostrich Farm , a tourist magnet wide believe to be the region ’s first theme commons , though with a rather remaining theme that included several hundred springy , flightless boo and the products made from them , including ( refined ) plume hats and ( delicious ? ) oversized omelette .
The site of the Cawston farm is now occupied by a pod of modern flat ( go rate for a one - bedroom in the Ostrich Farm Lofts : about $ 700,000 ) . From here , dobbin hoped to extend the route another seven nautical mile into Los Angeles . The conventional eyeshot , expressed to me by the owners of a umber house that stand at the dividing melody between South Pasadena and Los Angeles from about 2000 through 2008 , is that Dobbins baffle no further , that he never actually entered the city he hope to tie in with his adopted hometown of Pasadena ( the owners were cyclists , named the Cycleway Café after the Dobbins reconstruct , and claimed that their location digest at the Cycleway ’s southern boundary ) . But a story published in the Los Angeles Times on February 19 , 1899 , hint that building of the crushed portion of the Cycleway was on-going even as Dobbins struggled with financing the already - make segments . The article include a conceptual illustration of the Cycleway ’s centre , along the narrowest subdivision of the Arroyo Seco . Because of the direction the river rationalize between hillsides , there was a deficiency of flat , navigable terrain , make this the only section of the path that would sit down on a slope , a potential negative for bike rider ( farm horse had promised , in defiance of cathartic , that the route would be downhill in both counselling ) .
Cawston Ostrich Farm was one of the stop on the propose route , and it appears to have welcomed the development with least one Struthio camelus - power bicycle
There were no fancy hotel or established tourist goal between the Ostrich Farm and Los Angeles , so dobbin had to invent them himself , and what he propose would be more populis — and more grand — than the existing attraction along the route ’s northern segment . “ Among the most attractive feature of the enterprise are the plans for the ‘ Merlemount Park and Casino , ’ an up - todate pleasure ground and repair about midway on the line , ” the Times wrote . The clause continued : “ The company has guarantee 115 demesne of desirable land for this leverage , situated on the hills east of Highland Park , three and a half international nautical mile upstage from the mall in Los Angeles . ”
Today , the spot where Merlemount was to have stood is within another utopian conception — this one an actual winner . Debs Park consist of two trenchant halves . On the due east , over an 800 - foundation hilltop and away from the river , is a traditional city park , with basketball courts and baseball game diamonds . The Arroyo side , on land flattened by Dobbins , had been overtaken by nature during the following X , a spot of chaparral lonely enough to have become habitat for a marvelous miscellany of aboriginal plants , and , at its lower reaches , a less salutary enclave that sometimes attract prostitutes and drug trader . The proposed gambling casino web site was reclaimed in 2003 , when the California Audubon Society took control of the car park and built a nature center . It is n’t quite a casino , but the flat coat are pleasurable enough .
By the summer of 1899 , Dobbins had precipitate behind in his promise to nail the road . Though workers continued to hollow , money was loaded . By the fall of 1900 , Dobbins was having trouble paying his pecker , and on October 8 of that year , the Pasadena Daily Star reported that the “ Cycleway will do no more work now . ”
Even though the Cycleway never made it this far west , its path appear in function published at the prison term ( center epitome , just below the Arroyo Seco )
Over the next two decennium , Dobbins tried mightily to complete his route . But the bike boom was ending . In 1901 , the Pearson ’s article appeared , leaving the impression that the pathway was all over , that bike riders were zipper between the two cities , except when they were stopping to dine , gamble , and take in the salient views . In realism , the Cycleway was doomed . In 1902 , an enterpriser named Ransom Olds acquaint a chintzy , reliable car , the “ Oldsmobile . ” A year later , Henry Ford begin produce his first inner combustion engines . The Pasadena section of the Cycleway stood , fresh and deteriorating . In 1908 , the California Supreme Court rein that Dobbins had to return some of the land he ’d received via eminent domain . A year later , under threat of losing more property , Dobbins made a last - ditch proposal for the route , which he ’d rechristened “ The Air Line . ” This prison term , it would be a monorail to Los Angeles . For a decade , dobbin pushed the undertaking . On March 30 , 1919 , the citizens of Los Angeles voted on it .
dobbin fall behind .
There would be new routes along the Arroyo . Construction on what would eventually become the Pasadena Freeway — “ the 110”—would begin that same year , but Dobbins would n’t be a part of it . Could he have known ? I mean he did eff . The telling pic — one that was hung , frame , in the old Cycleway chocolate house , and which is the only known photo of Dobbins himself on the pathway — provides evidence of the optimism , foolishness , and fate of the project . Dobbins is smile . He ’s lofty . He ’s on the Cycleway . And he ’s drive a railcar .
If you want to ride a cycle from Pasadena to Los Angeles today , you have to cobble together a route . you’re able to observe the rough track of the Cycleway to South Pasadena on surface streets , bike past the old Ostrich Farm , then dropping into the 2.2 - mi - foresightful bike way along the Arroyo Seco . If it is n’t rain , you may take that modern way of life halfway to downtown before you ’re unceremoniously ejected onto control surface street just below the Merlemount situation .
The right - of - way from the Cycleway is intelligibly get word today as a trail of trees tailor through the vicinity on the correct side of the 110 Freeway . The current - daylight bike track runs along the Arroyo Seco waterway in the center of the effigy
of late , the city has begun trying to find a means to unite the Arroyo path to downtown . The design is to add new cycle lanes to exist street . As of late as a few days ago , this meant doing little more than painting a stripe and place up a few “ Share the Road ” signs . This more innovative lane would give a full three foot of room for cycle rider , creating a safe and well-heeled itinerary , integrated with traffic . The proposal is controversial , though , with local drivers plain that it would slacken their commute .
I wish the idea of few motorcar lanes , and I wish the idea of cycling on the master avenue , where bike — legally considered full - fledge vehicle — have a right to be . But the spots where these modifications are being suggest are just yards from the overgrown right - of - way I discovered that still bears the Cycleway name . It does n’t seem like it would take that much to clear that strip , pave it , and last bestow it to public use , as Dobbins stand for . And the route could be extended along the hillside , passing the nature center , which could provide a Merlemount - similar reprieve for fatigued passenger .
The only thing missing would be the terminal attraction farm horse dreamt up but never construct , his “ Swiss Dairy , ” an ice-skating rink cream parlor , place just before the path would have reach downtown . The question of ice pick is a serious one , as long as we ’re dreaming and conjecture . Riding a bike in Los Angeles is sweaty , hot work . Luckily , there ’s no pauperism to build something lasting . Modern Southern California is a paradise of frozen treats , tramp from pushcart vendor serve paletas — Mexican lolly — to marvelous trucks offer soft - serve . Somehow , I imagine , if the Dobbins path were revived and rebuilt , the amenities would follow . So would I. And as long as I ’m channelize Horace M. Dobbins , I would n’t be alone . M of others would join me . They ’d empty the pike and take to their wheel . And they would n’t just be playing on the nifty plot board that is Los Angeles . They ’d be last on it . They ’d be make it afresh .
Dan Koeppelis the writer of several books , includingBanana : The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World , and the Maker ofThe Big Parade , an annual urban hike through Los Angeles . This essay was adapted with license fromLAtitudes : An Angeleno ’s Atlas(Heyday ) a novel book that explores LA ’s landscape through 19 map - footnote storey about the city .
Join us for a Q&A with Dan Koeppel and LAtitude ’s editor in chief Patricia Wakida Wednesday , April 29 , at 2:00 pm EDT !
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