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Angels Flight By Walt Wheelock Soft Cover Copyright 1966 32 pages
Angels Flight By Walt Wheelock Soft Cover Copyright 1961, 1966 32 Pages
FORTUNATE IS that city which has many citizens bitten by the local-history bug. Out of their activities and excitement comes civic pride - and civic pride is contagious.
Los Angeles has people interested in its background and spectacular growth, yet could use many more. Now comes Walt Wheelock, long interested in mountain-climbing and Sierra Club affairs, to get the bug and to make a study of a romantic, surviving, downtown Los Angeles landmark.
The story of Angels Flight, tiny, inclined railway that carries townsmen to the heavily populated summit of Bunker Hill, is part of the story of local transportation. This account began with horses and mules, continued with ox-drawn carretas, carriages, wagons, stages, railroads, horse-cars, cable-cars and electric lines.
Angels Flight was born on December 31, 1901, when the running of its first cars were christened - not with champagne, but with fruit punch served to Mayor Snyder and other notables by the women of the Hill, then a favorite and elevated residence section. Ever since that christening Angels Flight has been used daily and has paid its way as a public utility.
Los Angeles may not have the frantic affection for this diminutive railway that San Francisco has for its cable-cars. Nevertheless, even among those Angelenos who never use the little cars - and most of us are in that class - there is a feeling of nostalgia aroused by the sight or thought of Angels Flight. It is part of the present that seems to belong to the past. In a changing scene it symbolizes all those things that most citjzens don't want ever to end. Who could not like this miniature funicular, faithfully and perennially performing its tasks. It even inspired a local newspaperman, Don Ryan, to write a romantic novel in 1927, which he called simply, Angels Flight.
Once Los Angeles had its Mt. Lowe Railway, and no visit to the city was complete without a ride up its spectacular incline. Once it had the Pacific Electric's Balloon Route which carried tourists to Hollywood and the beaches. In the 1880s it had the Grand Round, a carriage drive that started in Los Angeles, made its first stop at the Raymond Hotel in Pasadena, paused for lunch at the Sierra Madre Villa, continued to Lucky Bald-win's Santa Anita Rancho, on to the Mission San Gabriel and then back to Los Angeles. All of these and other amenities of the transportation world have passed away. They existed mostly for pleasure but had utilitarian values.
Angels Flight, in good company with such pleasurable activities, survives - possibly because, though romantic, it is useful and still costs only a nickel a ride.
With Bunker Hill's redeveopment threatening the existance of this funicular tie-in with the past, we have Walt Wheelock to thank for telling and preserving the story of Angels Flight in so thorough a manner and Ruth Daly for her skillful and detailed drawings that supplement and amplify the text. Angels Flight is a joint and happy achievement.
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