Yours Truly Makes the Morning Paper
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Being a journalist myself, you’d think getting quoted in the morning paper wouldn’t faze me. Still, I have to admit some giddiness at being included in a front-page Daily News article exploring the untold vastness of L.A. County’s archives.
Entitled History in a Box, this morning’s piece by Troy Anderson offers an intriguing look at “the millions of historical objects, documents, records, books, photographs, vehicles, artwork and items of natural and cultural significance stashed at 108 warehouses and facilities around the area with 1.6 million square feet of storage space…”
So who cares about all this accumulated junk? Well, frankly, curious lunatics like me — writers, historians and other researchers who will happily spend long hours sifting through the obscurest of items in search of that one musty old document or file that will make or break a theory, book or historical project.
Thus you’ll find yours truly quoted as an example for my work ferreting out long-lost facts surrounding the Feliz Curse at the Seaver Center for Western Research History, incidentally one of the few such institutions that graciously open their doors to non-academics.
Using historical documents at the Natural History Museum center, Imlay traced the tale in which 17-year-old Petronila Feliz cursed the [Griffith Park] property in 1863 after former Los Angeles Mayor Don Coronel allegedly coercer her uncle, Don Antonio Feliz, on his death bed to sign ownership of it over to him….
“A lot of historians have questioned the tale,” said Imlay, an Echo Park resident who is writing a book about the legend. “I’ve been able, to my satisfaction, to demonstrate a lot of the story is true.”
Anderson does a great job of enumerating some of the most unusual of the countless oddities to be found in the county’s collections, including rare 18th Century maps, crumbling court records, an aging nuclear fallout shelter, 45 meteorites, more than 2,000 sabertooth cats, and a 1920 document in which Carl Laemmle and Louis B. Mayer buy shares of the Cinema Mercantile, helping give birth to Hollywood.
The article also recounts the county’s ongoing attempts to organize, digitize and preserve its varied collections, let alone place a cost estimate on their maintenance. It’s a fun and informative read, so check it out!
