Fast Digs: Edge of the City

You may recall the name Los Angeles Agricultural Park from a couple earlier Fast Digs posts. Those posts showed photos from races that took place at the Park during the 1890s. What they do not mention is that Ag Park, while primarily a horse racing venue, was the earliest racing venue at which formal bicycle races in the city were held, races that date back into the mid-1880s, and were organized variously by the Los Angeles Athletic Club and the Association of Los Angeles Wheelmen.

Funny to think of it now, but at that time (the 1880s and 1890s) Agricultural Park, occupying land which today is known as Exposition Park, was at the very edge of Los Angeles, right at the line dividing city and rural lands. Kind of hard to imagine considering the city as we know it today. On the map above, if you follow the road (Pearl) that starts at the bottom center and follow it up toward the top, it leads directly to Agricultural Park's oval track (notice also the observation tower on the infield) and the great expanse of open space that stretched to the coast.

both images are cropped from the map Los Angeles, California, 1894, designed by Bruce Wellington Pierce and published by the Semi-Tropic Homestead Co.