[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by Flyingwedge

I have a theory on what's up with Diana Street.

I think the reason there's even a Diana Street in the first place has to do with 3rd Street (and maybe 4th Street) not originally crossing Bimini Slough/Sacatela Creek. Third Street comes in from the left of the map, just under the big circled 24, stops at Vermont, then jogs north. After 3rd Street was put straight across the creek, the old northern jog was renamed 2nd Street:

1921 Baist Map from Historic Mapworks (http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/19422/Plate+016/)

I've marked Diana Street with a red line on this 1929 photo. Apparently, not everything on the Baist Map came into existence. Curvy 4th Street is at the bottom; keep in mind the straight road leading from the northern apex of the 4th Street curve, just above and to the left of the black plus sign. I'm not sure if 4th Street is being laid out or is being dug up for construction; if the latter, we might be looking at the undergrounding of Sacatela Creek in progress:

LAPL (http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics42/00040733.jpg)

Here's an undated shot of the Sacatela undergrounding, possibly between 3rd and 4th, looking southwest towards the Ambassador Hotel; I assume the streetcars are on Vermont. I wish I could confirm that this photo shows the same area as in BifRayRock's posts 12289 and 12291, but on my old computer those pics are broken up into so many pieces, it's hard for me to tell what I'm looking at. Sorry.

USC Digital Library (http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/si...id/5569/rec/10)

Anyway, back to Diana Street. It's hard to see in the 1929 shot, but in this undated photo from I'm guessing the mid/late 1940s, there's clearly a house and grounds to the west of and behind the homes on the west side of Westmoreland:

LAPL (http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics33/00066409.jpg)
So here's my theory: I think that before Fourth Street was put through, Diana Street was the driveway to that house, or at least used as another entrance. Here there seems to be a tree-lined entrance of some sort, in the same place as the road in the 1929 photo, leading up from 4th Street to the house. Google Maps shows a phantom 3274 Diana Street; maybe that was that house's address? Diana Street isn't as overgrown in the 1929 photo -- which you'd be able to see if I hadn't put that red line there -- as it appears in later pics.

Thank you so much FW. You are awesome. I should have known I was looking at Bimini Slough, but I was so focused on 4th St, I was looking for something flowing east to west, not the southern terminus of what was left of Sacatela Crreek.

The Baist map was fascinating b/c the whole block was platted for house lots, that never seem to have been built. The empty land to the north was, at that time, I assume, thought to be unbuildable.

The photos of the erasure of Sacatela Creek are tragic. If much of the flowing water in LA had been left open, what a feature it would have made and a much pleasanter city. Eveytime there is a drought I think of the water we've piped for dumping. It really doesn't make any sense (unless one follows the money).

Originally Posted by Johnny Socko

Found it! The Lost Streams of Los Angeles, courtesy LA Weekly.

This is a must-read for geography geeks (like me), and armchair historians in general.

After I first read this article, I started paying attention to the topography in my neighborhood (Westlake), and could see where development had covered the old streambeds leading to the natural basins of MacArthur and Lafayette parks.

The aforementioned Bimini Slough was an outlet for Silver Lake before it was developed as a proper "lake". According to an old map posted in the Daily Mirror blog, it ran from there all the way down to 6th & Alexandria. The map depicted a proposed (circa 1917) greenbelt redevelopment project for Bimini Slough called "Silver Lake Parkway":

P.S. I was lost before, not realizing I was so close to the old Bimini Baths (1905-1951):

google maps

Thx again.