Lincoln Heights was home to the California Alligator Farm, from 1907 to 1953. The place was exactly what it sounds like -- to quote the brochure above, "World's largest Alligator farm. See The Trained Alligators. Over 1000 On Exhibition. One of the most novel and interesting sights in the world. Most stupendous aggregation ever exhibited. Opposite Lincoln Park. Also complete line of alligator handbags, purses, belts, etc. Our only salesroom is at the farm. We make a specialty of Alligator Bags Ornamented with Genuine Alligator Heads and Claws."
The Lincoln Heights LA website gives more detail about the park, including tons of images sent in by the park founder's son. Notes the site:
Almost 100 years ago, Lincoln Heights was a popular weekend getaway destination for city weary Angelenos ready for a walk on the wild side. They crossed wooden bridges over the Los Angeles River to visit Southern California's first and largest zoological attraction: the California Alligator Farm.
In 1907, when most Southern Californians thought alligator was a kind of handbag or boot, Francis Earnest, a one-time mining camp cook, and partner "Alligator" Joe Campbell amassed a small fortune by putting hundreds of the snappy reptiles on display.
Their alligator farm was located on Mission Road and Lincoln Park Avenue, next door to the Ostrich Farm, which Earnest had opened the year before. Visitors entered through a white stucco building with a narrow, two-story columned portico, where they paid 25 cents admission, and had the opportunity to buy all sorts of reptilian trinkets, including--naturally--rubber alligators.
This old book celebrates the kitsch that is Clifton's Cafeterias -- famed for the "Dine Free Unless Delighted" slogan. Yup, the mountain lodge-themed Clifton's Brookdale is still in operation; Clifton's famed island-themed Pacific Seas shut down in 1960.
Padre Pale Lager Beer from Los Angeles' Maier Brewing Company, which disappeared some time in the early 1970s.
A 1967 copy of Los Angeles' original alternative newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press. Here, the paper continues to cover the investigation into JFK's assassination. The paper went bankrupt in the early 1970s, following some suspicious occurances, according to the Wikipedia entry on the paper:
Notable for its radical politics when such views rarely saw print, the paper also pioneered the emerging field of underground comix by publishing the 'underground" political cartoons of Ron Cobb.
About 1970, much of the newspaper's staff bolted from Kunkin to start a competing paper, The Staff. Just after this happened however, the building the Freep was housed in mysteriously burned to the ground in a conflagration the arson investigators termed "remarkable". Noteworthy at the time, the Los Angeles Fire Department took over two hours to respond to the alarm. The cause of the fire has never been determined. Comcurrent with this incident was the forced closure of the Freep's bookstore at the corner of Fair Oaks and Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, on the grounds of "Health Code violations"; the bookstore sold no food, only printed material.
LA Free Press founder Art Kunkin announced plans last year to resurrect the newspaper, launching a website and producing at least four issues, the most recent the first week of this past January. But it doesn't look like much has happened since then, at least on the website.
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