A Family Gift to Los Angeles. A Responsibility We Share

By Trevor Griffith

In 1896, when Los Angeles was an American boomtown of fewer than 100,000 people, my great-great-grandfather, Griffith J. Griffith, gave the city more than 3,000 acres of land for a public park. He believed in Los Angeles and the city it would become. He also understood that as the city grew, people would need places to enjoy the beauty and restorative power of nature.

"It must be made a place of rest and relaxation for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people," he said when he donated the land.

Years later, he offered to pay for a "Hall of Science," as he called it, where anyone could experience the wonders of the universe, and he left money in his will to build it. Looking at the sky through a telescope, he believed, could change the way people saw the world and their place in it. His gifts became two of Los Angeles' most beloved public treasures: Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory.

More than a century later, I'm enormously proud of what our family's gifts have become. Millions of Angelenos have walked the park's trails, gathered under its trees, and looked through the Observatory's telescopes. Millions more have come from far and wide for the same experience. Together, the park and observatory draw more than 11 million visitors annually. What makes me proudest is that these places belong to everyone — just as Griffith J. Griffith envisioned.

Those gifts, however, also came with an expectation: that the city would maintain and preserve them for the enjoyment and benefit of the public. Today, Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory are both part of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, which cares for public spaces and facilities across the city.

Decades of underfunding have taken their toll. Aging facilities, deferred maintenance, and reduced staffing are wearing down the parks and programs that generations of Angelenos have enjoyed.

Take Griffith Observatory. Over the decades, it has greatly expanded its astronomy education programs. We reach 70,000 students yearly, including the more than 25,000 fifth graders who visit every year. They jump up and down in front of the seismograph to make a mini "earthquake." They proudly share what they've learned: Venus, at 864 degrees Fahrenheit, is way too hot for human habitation! They sit in the Samuel Oschin Planetarium, rapt, as live narrators explain the universe to them.

But expanding services while resources shrink can't last. Los Angeles needs to fund its parks. Entrance to Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory has always been free but maintaining them is not.