THE OSTRICH FARM RAILWAY
[Note: This essay was written for and originally appeared in the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council newsletter]
Today Silver Lake is, by most accounts, moderately well served by mass transit. The website, Walk Score, assigns Silver Lake a transit score of 54 out of a possible 100. Thanks to Metro’s 2, 4, 92, 96, 182, and 603 lines, part of Primrose Hill is the only corner of Silver Lake located more than three-quarters of a mile from a Metro route.
On the other hand, most buses arrive infrequently, even the best bus stops are rudimentary, and the neighborhood lacks even a single dedicated bus-lane. There has also been a complete absence of rail transit in Silver Lake since the 1950s, when the Glendale-Burbank, San Fernando, and Subway-Hollywood lines all ended service. After a recent appearance on KPCC/LAist’s program, How to LA, in which I discussed our mass transit, another historic Silver Lake transit line came up as we rode down Sunset Boulevard — the Ostrich Farm Railway. Afterward, several people asked to hear more about that.
Our story begins in 1881, when a former physician in the British Army living in Cape Town, Charles Jarom Sketchley, hatched an idea to import ostriches to the US. Ostrich feathers were then very much in demand for feather boas, fans, and hats. He set out from South Africa with 200 ostriches in December 1882 and arrived in New York City before taking a train to Los Angeles County. By the end of the journey, 178 of the birds had died, leaving just 22 to live on his ranch in what’s now Orange County. These were the first ostriches in the country, and naturally, they attracted both gawkers and feather thieves. Sketchley made a bit of additional profit by charging fifty cents to visitors on Wednesdays and Sundays. It was a success, attracting hundreds of visitors most days.
In 1885, Sketchley relocated ostrich operation to Griffith J. Griffith’s Rancho Los Feliz, where he partnered with Elizabeth Laver, Frank Burkett, Granville P. Beauchamp, and Randolph Stracey. The operation was named the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm and Zoological Garden. A new refreshment stand offered “liquors, wines, cigars and eatables.” In order to visit the farm, though, the first visitors had to board the Temple Street Cable Railway, disembark at its terminus, and then transfer to a horse-drawn carriage that would convey them the rest of the way. Into this picture stepped another enterprising businessman, real estate speculator Moses Langley Wicks. In November 1886, Wicks obtained permission from City Council to construct a railway from the Sisters’ Hospital in Victor Heights directly to the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm.
Before the railway was even completed, however, it was taken over by the Los Angeles County Railway Company. “The Cut,” that marks the border between Echo Park and Silver Lake, on Sunset Boulevard, was blasted into the sandstone hills to make way for the train. At what’s now Sunset Triangle Plaza, the railway turned up what’s now Griffith Park Boulevard. The ostrich farm was renamed the Kenilworth Ostrich Farm in 1887. The railway arrived at the ostrich farm, in the Crystal Springs area, on 24 September 1888.
Unfortunately, the Ostrich Farm never really took flight. Beauchamp and Sketchley sued Stracey for having a relationship with a woman named Govinda, whose Indian ethnicity, they claimed, brought them all “scandal and reproach” and was therefore detrimental to the ostrich farm’s success. Laver sued Sketchley and Beauchamp. Burkett and Griffith had a falling out, too, to put it mildly. The former shot the latter with a shotgun before killing himself with a revolver. The Los Angeles Ostrich Farm closed in 1889. Sketchley took his share of the ostriches and moved with them to a farm outside of Red Bluff. The surrounding area became Griffith Park in 1896. The ostrich farm railway was eventually absorbed in Pacific Electric Railway. Much of its route became Sunset Boulevard in 1904.
While the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm and its railway may’ve been short-lived, it was influential. By 1910, there were ten other local ostrich farms; and they — along with an alligator farm and even a pigeon farm — remained popular local attractions in Los Angeles’s pre-amusement park landscape. The Griffith Park Zoo opened near the site of the former ostrich farm in 1912. The farm’s founder, Dr. Charles J. Sketchley, died in 1916.
FURTHER READING
The Los Angeles and Pacific Railway by Franklyn Hoyt (The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California)
“A look into landslides reveals Sunset Boulevard’s rocky past” by Rory Mitchell (The Eastsider LA, 2011)
“Southern California’s First Amusement Parks? Ostrich Farms.” by Nathan Masters (PBS SoCal, 2012)
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Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”
Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hey Freelancer!, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft Contemporary, Form Follows Function, the Los Angeles County Store, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles, Skid Row Housing Trust, the 1650 Gallery, and Abundant Housing LA.
Brightwell has been featured as subject and/or guest in The Los Angeles Times, VICE, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, CurbedLA, Office Hours Live, L.A. Untangled, Spectrum News, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, Notebook on Cities and Culture, the Silver Lake History Collective, KCRW‘s Which Way, LA?, All Valley Everything, Hear in LA, KPCC‘s How to LA, at Emerson College, and at the University of Southern California.
Brightwell is currently writing a book about Los Angeles.
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Eric Brightwell 
Eric .I love your stuff . I have been an L.A. history freak for 50 years. I grew up on Figueroa Terr and have always been interested in L.A history. I have a question no one has ever seemed to be able to answer. What was the old road out of LA to the north in the early 1800s. I have looked at dozens of old maps ,The oldest being the Ord map from 1848. In the upper left corner it shows a road that forks. one heading west which is probably going to the tar pits and one that looks like it is swinging north. This road goes south from the Plaza to what looks like maybe ninth st which makes sense because that is where the hills fall away. ant thoughts? thanks Mark
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Thank you and I’ll have to look into that… and to remember to look into it!
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I was not aware that the Sunset Blvd cut went back that far. I thought it was built as part of the Los Angeles Pacific Ry. line from downtown to Hollywood. One relic of the LAP/PE days is the Olive Substation building at 2798 Sunset Blvd. It was de-energized in 1954 or 55, and for a while was used by a taxidermy shop. Last time I was in the area (about 8 years ago) it was occupied by a design firm.
The ostrich farm I am most familiar with is Cawston Ostrich Farm in South Pasadena. It lasted into the 1930s and is memorialized by Cawston Ave. and the Southern Calif. Edison Cawston 4 kV local distribution circuit.
For a book that incorporates both the Ostrich Farm and the Pacific Electric in its story, I recommend “Arroyo” by Chip Jacobs.
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