The park is the historic site of the
Centinela Springs, an artesian spring that gave the 19th century
Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela its name. Trees were planted around the original site of the springs, in what later became Centinela Park, as early as 1886. The park sits at the corner of
Centinela Avenue and
Florence Avenue. The
K Line (Los Angeles Metro) tracks border the park; the
Yellow Cars used the same right-of-way in the first half of the 20th century.
Early development Prior to its use as a park, the site was "a brickyard, a [brief] mushroom-growing operation and a fig orchard which paid dividends". Some sort of recreational layout may have existed by 1895: “Thanksgiving day the Inglewood Baseball club played the Brickyard Nine on the diamond at Centinela.” The chimney of the closed brick kiln was ultimately demolished by the
Keystone Film Company as part of a movie shoot in 1910. The park’s street address is on Warren Lane; the lane is named after a
person named J. Warren Lane (1872-1940), an early settler and nurseryman who "led a movement for development of Centinela Park and organized groups to sponsor tree plantings there in what was once a fig orchard he had set out". The fig orchard was originally owned by the Inglewood Water Company and later transferred to the city of Inglewood. J. Warren Lane, who had worked the old orchard as a horticulturist (introducing the
wasp needed to pollinate
Smyrna figs), was appointed a park commissioner in 1925. In 1928 he organized a planting of three acres of native species on the highest point in Centinela Park, following a speech by
Theodore Payne, "Los Angeles authority on wild-flower planting, who talked on the necessity for preserving California’s wild-flower heritage." In 1929, Lane was honored by the city for "laying out and beautifying Centinela Park". The local American Legion post was also heavily involved in the park’s early years, funding the Veterans' Memorial building and "the plunge" swimming pool, as well as sponsoring tree plantings throughout the park "in honor of fallen heroes".
The park’s New Deal The park was described in the
Federal Writers’ Project American Guide Series Los Angeles guidebook in 1941: Several elements of the park were built during the
Great Depression. The swimming pool was dedicated in 1929; the cornerstone of the Veterans’ Memorial Building reads 1934. Besides the playhouse, another performance venue with the park is a
WPA-constructed outdoor amphitheater with band shell, originally called the Centinela Bowl, after the famed
Hollywood Bowl. Contemporary listings of the amphitheater as a potential
filming location describe a "large cement stage with exit tunnels on both sides. 40 rows of brick and cement benches on sloped hill". The park originally had
lawn bowling and
horseshoe pitching courts as well as many of the same features as today. The victims were nine-year-old Melba Everett, seven-year-old Madeline Everett, and eight-year-old Jeanette Stephens. An adult niece of the Everett sisters wrote a book called
Little Shoes (published 2018) about how the crime impacted their family.
Pleistocene fossils The
fossils mentioned in the American Guide entry for Centinela Park were excavated by the
USC Department of Geology in collaboration with the city of Inglewood in 1940. The
Los Angeles Times reported that finds included "the
Imperial Elephant,
mastodons, a horse about the size of a present-day draft horse, camels, bison,
saber-tooth tigers,
great ground sloths, tiny deer, and many water birds, indicating that the area was a river during the
Ice Age". Some of the finds were added to the collection of the
Natural History Museum in
Exposition Park. ==References==