It’s so large, it’s easy not to notice it.
Its 400feet of brick, mosaic tile and glazed terra cotta could be nothing butan oddretaining wallkeeping what’s left ofFt.Moore Hill from falling.
On the speedway that Hill Street becomes between downtown andChinatown, amotorist could never appreciatethe structure’s eloquently wordedtributetomilitary service, the pioneering spirit and Californiahistory.
“It’s the most historically and geographically important monument that nobody knows about,” said Clare Haggarty, manager of L.A. County’s art collections. “It’s where Los Angeles really began, and it’s huge, and so many people don’t know it exists.”
Itsmost distinctive feature, a 77-foot-widewall of water cascading over multicoloredmosaic tiles, has been dry since 1977, possibly contributing to itsanonymity.
Now, after 40 years of neglect, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has set aside money to bring the Ft.Moore Pioneer Memorialout of hiding.
Within the next month, scaffolding will rise for the first phase of the renovation, replacing nearly 300,000 tiles that back upthe waterfall. Then ashadow of pastgraffiti will be removed from the brick. Chunks missingfromthe bas-relief depiction of the city’s first Fourth of July will be refilled by hand to match the glazed terra cotta. Then, drought or no drought, the water will flow again.
No firm date has been set for the project’s completion, but it would be fittingif it came soon enough for a rededication on July 4, 59 years and a dayafter its first dedication.
On July 3,1958, members of the Mormon Battalion of Salt Lake City, some of them descendants of the originalmilitary unit that played a key role in early California,reenacted the first raising of the American flag over Los Angeles 111years earlier.
Thememorial commemorates an episode when a battalion of Mormon volunteersstood guard over Los Angeles. Theonly religiously based unit in U.S. Army history, it had marched nearly 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Los Angeles via San Diegofor a war that was over by the time it arrived.
The Treaty of Cahuenga, thoughnot the formal end of the Mexican-American War, broughtpeace to California in January1847.
Several months later, the Mormon Battalion, joined by the 1st Regimentof Dragoons and the New York Volunteers, observed the first Fourth of July in Los Angeles by raisingthe U.S. flag on apole of two spliced logs that was reputed to be 100 feet tall.
Watch a scene that starts at the 46 minute mark of this 1960s TV show to see what the fountain looked like when it running >>
videoThe event took place on the earthen walls of a fort the soldiers wereordered to build in defense of the city. It was named for Benjamin Moore, an officer who had been killed in a battle near San Diego.
The Mormon Battalion was soondischarged, its place in history secured less for military feats than forblazing a southwest routefor the settlement of the new U.S. territory where many of the soldiers’descendants then settled.
The development of a massivemonument was a confluence of two unrelated threads. One was the influence in L.A. society ofthe Daughters of Utah Pioneers, a group of those descendants, whichgained the backing ofLos Angeles Times matron Dorothy Chandler and then-L.A. County Supervisor John Anson Ford.
The other was the need for a largewall.
It was a time spanningWorld War II when a massive reshaping ofCivic Center erased much of the area’searly history. Along with the fort, two early cemeteries and a hilltop neighborhood of Victorian houses belonging to the city’selite all disappeared in a series of excavations that began in the 1930s to make way for roads and buildings.
Ft.Moore Hill, which once extended from its current stub east to Spring Street, was clipped several times, the last in 1949 to make room for the newHollywood Freeway.
The scarp that remained on its east side became the canvas for two immigrant sculptors, London-born Albert StewartandConnecticut-based German nativeHenry Kreis, according to the Los Angeles County Arts Commission website.
Kreis, who won a competition for the job,designed the terra cotta relief on the south of the waterfallthat depictsthe flag raising.
Aseries ofvignettes showthe Mormon Battalion’smarch, a prairie schooner, a steam locomotive andregional scenes such as orange groves andcattle ranching.
Breaking up the view of the brick wall on the north side,a 68-foot pylon bears the eagle-crested inscription, “To the brave men and women who with trust in God faced privation and death in extending the frontiers of our country to include this land of promise.”
In what would become an ironic element, one of the vignettes recognizes the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a sponsor of the memorial, with the inscription: “Water and power have made our arid land flourish.”
The fountainwas turned off in1977 during a drought. When rains finally returned, it was too late for the 47-foot-tall waterfall.Its mosaic tiles were falling off, and its pumps had been vandalized.
The Pioneer Memorial was all but forgotten,popping up only occasionally in news reports on Fourth of Julyreenactments of the 1847 flag raising.
In the hope of spurring a revival, a civic group stagedan elaborate reenactment in 1997with nearly 100 costumed soldiers, a 28-musket salute and blast from a period howitzer.
In 2000, at the request of then-Supervisor Gloria Molina, the county did acost analysis for a restoration.Nothing came of it at the time.
Looking back,Molina told The Times recently, she thought it a shame that the waterfall had beenneglectedbutwas conflicted about memorializing the fort.“That’s where they were shooting at us from,” she said, referring to a clash between soldiers and rebellious campesinos.
She needn’t have worried. The fort, erected by hand labor in only a few days, came after the shooting stopped, according to the California State Military Museumswebsite.The battalion’s military achievement, if any, has been characterized by various sources asbuffering Los Angeles from a rumored Mexican counterattack or discouragingGen. John C. Fremont’s aspirations to lead an independent California.
Molina’s plan got new lifein 2014 amid a general revitalization of the north end of Civic Center.
“There’s so much happening with Grand Park and the Hall of Justice reopening, it was time,” Haggarty said.
The Board of Supervisorscommitted about $4.1million, later increased to $5.5 million,and the city added $500,000.
Donna Williams, who was the consulting conservator for the Hall of Justice and Hollyhock House restorations, will oversee the preservation work, ensuring that itfollows U.S. Department of Interior guidelinesso the memorial can one day be added to the list of historic sites, Haggarty said.
This recentsurge of rain may havespared the county the double irony of turning the water back on duringanother drought.
Butofficials are mindful of the need to balance the goals ofhistorical accuracy and water conservation, saidDavid Palma, capital projects managerwith the county Department of Public Works.
The cascade that originally gushed like a miniatureNiagara Falls will be reduced toa thin layer to eliminatespray, and pumps originallyimmersed in an 80-foot by 30-foot pool at the foot of the waterfallwill be moved to autility room.
No longer will it be necessary to drain the 64,000-gallonreflecting pool to maintain the pumps.
doug.smith@latimes.com
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