FROM THE LIONS' DENS AND THE MOUNTAIN HAUNTS OF LEOPARDS --HERMON





Hermon and the deodars planted by the Arroyo Vista Woman's Club in memorium [sic] of Grace Ebey Reed

In the

of 2012 I had a stint house-sitting in

I spent much of my time exploring that neighborhood with a dog named

. This past fall I again returned to the

and Dooley I resumed our epic walks. This time around we explored

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

, and on one late afternoon,



More signs of Hermon



Detail of JR Prince's Territory Annexed to Los Angeles, 1781-1916 (source: Big Maps Blog )



Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography's Map of Hermon

ARROYO SECO







EARLY HISTORY

The earliest known inhabitants of the area that's now Hermon arrived there some 13,000 years ago. About 10,000 years later the ancestors of the

arrived from the

, ultimately establishing the villages of

nearby to the south and Hahamongna to the north.

The Tongva reign ended shortly after

's overland expedition passed through the area in 1769, setting the stage for Spanish conquest. In 1771, the conquerors constructed

, at first in

. In 1776 the mission was moved to its present location in

, eight kilometers to the east of what's now Hermon. A few years later, in 1781,

was founded the same distance away to the southwest.



The area that now comprises Hermon was located just beyond the northeast corner of the land designated Los Angeles, in lands belonging to the nearby Mission. Spanish rule ended when

achieved independence in 1821 and the mission holdings were subsequently secularized. Mexico's rule would prove even shorter than Spain's and ended in 1848 when

was conquered by the





By the turn of the 20th Century, the land that would become Hermon was proving to be a hard sell for its then-owner, Ralph Rogers, who'd successfully overseen developments in Eagle Rock, Garvanza, and Highland Park but was unable to find a buy of the isolated property that became even more isolated when the seasonal Arroyo Seco flooded.

. In 1850, California entered the union and Los Angeles incorporated as a city.By the turn of the, the land that would become Hermon was proving to be a hard sell for its then-owner,, who'd successfully overseen developments in, andbut was unable to find a buy of the isolated property that became even more isolated when the seasonal Arroyo Seco flooded.



FOUNDATION OF HERMON





Photo of the 1913 Arroyo Seco flood (image source: Hermon, Los Angeles



Undated photo (late 1930s?) of Hermon looking south (image source: Hermon, Los Angeles )

HERMON COMMUNITY

CHURCH







Hermon Community Church



The original Hermon Church in 1921 (image source: Hermon, Los Angeles )







THE SCHOOLS OF HERMON





Los Angeles Free Methodist Seminary in 1920 (image source: Hermon, Los Angeles )



Bushnell Way Elementary School



Undated picture of kids playing outside the American School (image source: Hermon, Los Angeles )

HODEL RESIDENCE & TEA HOUSE





The Hodel Residence (Tea House not in picture)

MONTEREY TRAILER PARK



Monterey Trailer Park

HERMON BECOMES HIGHLAND PARK



HERMON CAR WALL







Hermon Car Wall

ENDING ISOLATION





Avenue 60 Bridge

Hermon may've become part of Highland Park on paper in 1922 but in reality it remained largely isolated (except from South Pasadena) until the Avenue 60 bridge over the Arroyo Seco was constructed in 1926. The so-called Monterey Road Pass (also known as "The Great Wall of Hermon" or "The Cut" to some locals) was cut through the hills to the south in 1930 and is, in my mind, the most scenic way to enter the neighborhood. Hermon Avenue Bridge was constructed in 1939.

Monterey Road Pass

CLAUDE WATSON

LYONS GAS STATION





The old Lyons Gas Station







Lyons Gas Station back in the 1950s (image source: Hermon, Los Angeles)

MONTEREY PLAZA







Monterey Plaza and "Downtown" Hermon

RENAMING ROADS

La Due Way -- was this part of an abandoned development project?

*****

HERMON

DEMOGRAPHICS

GETTING THERE AND GETTING AROUND





Leave your cars at home... or the daycare center

HERMON HIGHRISES







Villa Marisol

HERMON DINING SCENE



Tiny Mama's

HERMON VILLAGE GREENS







Hermon Park

HERMOND SOCIETIES

HERMON HARMONIES







Art in the Park



Another view of the Lalo Guerrero School of Music

CELLULOID HERMON

OTHER SITES TO SEE & STUFF TO DO

*****

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*****





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Hermon is a small neighborhood situated in a small valley between the neighborhood ofto the north and west, and the city ofto the east. To the southeast is the neighborhood ofand to the southwest is the neighborhood of. When the community of Hermon was just nine years old it was annexed bybut more than a century later there are both Hermon residents and visitors who think of it as its own municipality.The spirit of autonomy was supported even in the years after the community's absorption into a growing metropolis. A brochure from 1916 described Hermon as occupying “an ideal location, within the City of Los Angeles, but well removed from city vices and allurements.” In 1922 it formally joined Highland Park but its sense of separateness never seems to have vanished entirely.Hermon's small size, distance from "city vices and allurements," and independent streak seem to have kept it obscure. In fact, it's best known for being unknown. Takeand's podcast,, for which the theme-song-singingcaterwauls of a “...long-lost neighborhood of Hermon between South Pas and Highland Park.” Anarticle byreferred to Hermon as “a corner of Los Angeles that time didn't forget but just about everyone else did.” Hermon doesn't even exist onor LA Times'project.doesn't have a Hermon Patch and there's nofor it. Still, Hermon isn't exactly a lost civilization and its roughly 3,255 residents are hardly an uncontacted people.As Dooley and I braved the streets of Hermon, we encountered no hostile natives (unless you count barking dogs). Quite the contrary, in fact -- as Dooley and I walked down, our first encounter with one of the natives involved a pretty, smiling, Vietnamese woman clothed in the sort of exotic, stripy traditional garb one might get atorWhen she said, "hello" (in English) it was with such disarming friendliness that for a split second I thought that she was either somehow expecting us or that we were already acquainted.It actually turned out to be our only interaction with anyone in Hermon and although it hardly felt like we'd entered some fabled land of the lost, the neighborhood does have a discernible air of distinctness. For one there are more pick-up trucks per capita than one finds in most neighborhoods on this side of Angeles Forest -- there were even a couple of monster trucks. Hermon also smells clean and cedar-y... something I associate more with National Forests more than suburban corners of Los Angeles. There are quite a few stately deodars and sycamores and the barriers formed by theandbut they alone couldn't account for the sensation that we'd traveled quite a bit further than we actually had.The main physical barrier between the rest of Los Angeles and Hermon is the not-usually-very-imposing Arroyo Seco.for “dry stream,” the Arroyo Seco is a river with headwaters nearinthat passes betweenandbefore it becomes channelized, belowand near the north end ofin. After that it continues downward, sheathed in concrete, until it reaches the confluence with theatthe neighborhood confluences of, and. A rather short stretch of the river is paralleled by the, which currently begins in South Pasadena and continues south through Hermon towhere it ends. Hopefully that will someday be extended to entire the 40 kilometer length of the river (it's currently only about three kilometers long).The floodplain's isolation was something of a selling point to, who'd moved to Los Angeles from Illinois in 1888 with the hope of improving his wife's health. Ebey was a reverend in the sternsect who sought to found a colony of likeminded folks. Rogers gave Ebey fourteen acres of land to build a seminary and 100 lots to sell to other Free Methodists. The newly established community was namedafterin thetongue), the highest peak in what's nowToday, streets including, andstill serve as reminders of the community's early leaders (, Ebey,, andrespectively) who though they undoubtedly preached humility, apparently weren't above being honored through thoroughfares.The originalcongregation organized in 1903. It wasn't until 1910 that they got around to building their first church. The currentbuilding dates back to 1949.opened in 1904. In 1911, curriculum was expanded with the addition of junior college courses. In 1934, the school became, a four year university. In 1965, the struggling school was absorbed byand the campus was turned over to, which evolved into, which closed in 2004. The campus is now leased to(LAICHS), which may or may not be connected toTrying to sort it out was taking to long and frankly not that interesting to me but I did notice a sign at the base of a hill that said something about it being the future site of Bethesda.The other school in the neighborhood is. It was originally known as The American School and judging from historic photos it apparently was housed in at least two school buildings. An attractive "new" building was constructed in 1935. If I have the story correctly,was the school's first principal and folks wanted to name the school after her but there was a rule against naming schools after living people (and Rose Bushnell was a living principal). Instead of waiting for Bushnell to die, they instead named a street after her and then the school after the street.Hermon is full of charming homes including some of the modest kit homes that housed the community's first inhabitants. One of the more interesting and least modest houses in Hermon is the Hodel Residence. It was designed byarchitectin 1921 for twoimmigrants, bankerand his wife,. The two were notably also big supporters of the arts and friends with famedcomposerThe couple's son, George Hill Hodel, Jr., was given the tea house in the back and later went on to be the suspect in several murders and of raping his daughter. In 2003, that Hodel's son, a formerhomicide detective published, alleging that his father wast the murderer ofI think it was around 2006 that I had the opportunity to poke around the whimsical mansion although I can't remember what the exact circumstances were. I seem to remember it needing a bit of love at the time but at some point around the same time it was designated aJust down the hill from the Hodel Residence is another residential development from the same era that's been designated a Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Monument -- the. The word "motel" (a portmanteau of "motor" and "hotel") was coined in 1925. Around 1923, Elmer Drummond (who operated a service station nearby) opened thein Hermon, a sort of motel precursor made possible as people were just beginning to undertake long road trips. Most if not all of the original ten cabins are gone -- replaced by mobile homes.In 1923, theof thepublished a short book titled. Hermon, the smallest of the "five friendly valleys," had forsaken its own identity (as had the communities of, and) toband together as the(GHPA), hoping that in doing so the area would gain clout. Although as a result most people came to think of all of those neighborhoods as Highland Park, decades later some would be revived as growing numbers of Angelenos began increasingly rejecting anonymity and embracing history and community.Hermon's third Historic Cultural monument is an interesting piece of, the so-called-bornmoved to Los Angeles in 1926, taking up residence in the. He worked for Carmichael Traffic Corporation, the LA Traffic Bureau, and apparently owned six cars. In 1932 he bought a piece of property he calledin Hermon which he used as a campground and to go a littlenow and then. With the aid of a nephew, he built a rather tall retaining wall out of car parts, bricks takend from the rubble a schoolhouse felled by the Long Beach Earthquake, and regular old cement. The wall was completed in 1941 and Sederquist died in 1959. In recent years, gravity seems to have gotten the upper hand but it's still an interesting site and not entirely dissimilar to's much better known-- built during the same period and the only other piece of folk art on the monument list. The address given, the intersection of Pullman and Lodge, is not especially helpful because both are only "paper streets" -- streets that exist only on maps but that no one got around to actually making happen. Therefore, the easiest way to find the wall is to head up what appears to be a shared driveway stretching uphill and southwest from Terrill Avenue.Around the same time, Hermon resident(a Free Methodist lawyer) ran for office on theticket. The Prohibition Party (PRO) is the oldest third party in the US and is still trying to make alcohol illegal. In the 2012 presidential election, the PRO presidential candidate even received 519 votes. In 1935, two years after Prohibition's repeal, Watson ran as Vice President in support ofand the two received 37,667 votes. He ran for president on the same party ticket in 1944 and '48, receiving 103,489 votes in the latter, more successful election -- only 24 million fewer votes than. Although deed restrictions that kept the town dry for decades have been lifted for even more, there are still zero bars, nightclubs, taverns, or any other sorts of watering holes in Hermon so in a sense, it's still a dry town (although as far as I known you can buy alcohol at the market and possibly thestation).It's not a recognized Historic Cultural Monument but I happen to be a fan of old service stations. Lyons Gas Station was built in 1953. It's currently home toHermon's business district, or downtown (if you can call it that), is dominated by-- a shopping center constructed in the. Monterey Plaza is dominated by Hermon's only market ---- which like many markets of its size includes a bakery, kitchen and deli in addition to grocery section. The market is also a popular filming location and an ad starring a guy namedand another with those-esque hipsters who hawk car insurance -- as well as a dozen others -- have been shot there.In 1978, then-concilmanrenamed Hermon Avenue after his then-three-year-old daughter,. The freeway exit sign was changed to reflect the re-designation. Not everyone in Snyder's constituency was apparently happy andresponded by restoring the name to the traffic sign, although they ignominiously misspelled it "Herman Ave." Their mistake wouldn't be corrected until 2002! Snyder passed away in 2012 and some immediately seized on the opportunity to demand thatbe re-named. I have no problem with that although I'd simply like to point out thatwas formerlybut no one seems to be clamoring for its nomenclatural restoration.According to, the population of Hermon is 61%, 16%, 15%, 5%and 1%The only public transit serving the neighborhood directly are'sandbus lines. Metro's Gold Line light rail train also passes through the community but the nearest stop,, is less than a kilometer away in Highland Park.(one of the few online resources who recognizes Hermon's existence) gives Hermon a walkscore of 50, a transit score of 44, and a bike score of 38 – all relatively low but probably more a reflection of the fact that most “errands” (especially if said “errands” involve, say, going to a bar) require leaving the neighborhood and not that the community isn't easily walkable, bikeable, and close to public transit stops -- because it is. Most of Hermon is pretty flat although some of the residential streets around(originally known as) in the north end are slightly hilly.'s book,, includes a walk through Hermon and Highland Park (Walk #6) which the author rates 2.5 out of 5 on a scale of difficulty.The tallest structures in Hermon, as near as I can tell, are the hills – which are usually ignored because acknowledging them would challenge the prevailing stereotypes of Los Angeles as a horizontal city. As far as human-made structures are concerned, none seem to rise above maybe six stories (incidentally the same number of stories as the first building to be labeled a skyscraper had), although a couple of complexes reach or approach that height. Those include, andThere are only a a handful of restaurants in Hermon:, and. Anyone who knows me know that at any hour I'm liable to go for Thai and I'm by no means an authenticity hound -- but when most of a Thai place's glowing reviews rave about orange chicken (adish), I can't help but get a little warys.Monterey Donuts is a highly-rated donut establishment in a city full of donuts but unfortunately, there are far fewer occasions when I would seek out sweets so I passed on it too, despite the rave reviews (none of which mention items you wouldn't expect to find there -- like orange chicken). I didn't pop into Aki Sushi either, but as long as there are more vegetarian options than just tempura, I'm willing.Tasty Mama's is the latest tenant in a building that sees a lot of turnover -- it was recently home to, and. The building was constructed in 1915 and has a nice ambiance and I'll try to check it out at another time, provided that it's still there.Hermon is home to two parks (three if you count the city-owned median with deodars and thefont Hermon sign).is a decent-sized, unstaffed, dawn-to-dusk park with grills, a playground, picnic tables, and lit tennis courts.Nearby is– an off-leash, dawn-to-dusk dog park supported by the, a group which seems to be the most active organizer of local events and observances in the the neighborhood, such as, in which human participants mark the ancientharvest festival by dressing their canine companions in strange garb and have a "peanut butter lick-off." The dog park includes two fenced areas: one for big dogs and one for small, disabled, shy, or elderly dogs. It should be pointed out here thatlisted the Hermon Dog Park as the 7th best in the USA and it also got high marks from fellow urban explorer,In addition to Friends of Hermon Dog Park, there is (or at least was) a, a, theof theand apage. There's also awebsite from which I obtained all of this entry's historic photos and is a really great community resource.I'm not aware of any musicians or composers born in Hermon. I'm similarly unaware of any live music venues, music festivals, independent music stores. If there are, please let me know in the comments and I'll add them. I did see a pot-smoking teen wearing aT-Shirt and I heard an ice cream truck playingbut that was about as far as my musical experiences in Hermon went.There is also, home to the-- a non-profit organization that teaches music lessons to children (8 - 18 years old) in thearea -- presumably including those from Hermon. A plaque outside the building says that it was constructed by thein 1939., for those that don't know, was a labor activist and musician and theThere've been many television commercials filmed at various locations but I'm not aware of too many films or or television series either set or shot in the neighborhood -- just In Time (2011) and(2012), both of which featured the scenic Monterey Road Pass. I'm also not aware of any actors or filmmakers from Hermon nor any independent movie stores, historic theaters, or film festivals in Hermon. Once again, if you are, please let me know in the comments.As with much of Los Angeles, at night Hermon seems like a pretty sleepy place. Most of the sanctioned, public amusements are strictly daytime only. If there's even a grain of truth to internet hysteria, Hermon Park seems to attractandafter night falls. Anyway, if I'm missing any art festivals, movies in the park, or farmers markets, &c, please let me know.As always, I welcome corrections, additions, and personal accounts of Hermon experiences.