can be seen in the background. The
Chumash and
Tongva people used tar from the pits to build
plank boats by sealing planks of
California redwood trunks and pieces of driftwood from the
Santa Barbara Channel, which they used to navigate the California coastline and
Channel Islands. The
Portolá expedition, a group of Spanish explorers led by
Gaspar de Portolá, made the first written record of the tar pits in 1769. Father
Juan Crespí wrote, While crossing the basin, the scouts reported having seen some geysers of tar issuing from the ground like springs; it boils up molten, and the water runs to one side and the tar to the other. The scouts reported that they had come across many of these springs and had seen large swamps of them, enough, they said, to caulk many vessels. We were not so lucky ourselves as to see these tar geysers, much though we wished it; as it was some distance out of the way we were to take, the Governor [Portolá] did not want us to go past them. We christened them
Los Volcanes de Brea [the Tar Volcanoes]. Harrison Rogers, who accompanied
Jedediah Smith on his 1826 expedition to California, was shown a piece of the solidified asphalt while at
Mission San Gabriel, and noted in his journal, "The Citizens of the Country make great use of it to pitch the roofs of their houses". The La Brea Tar Pits and Hancock Park were formerly part of the
Mexican land grant of
Rancho La Brea. For some years, tar-covered bones were found on the property but were not initially recognized as fossils because the ranch had lost various animals—including horses, cattle, dogs, and even camels—whose bones closely resemble several of the fossil species. Initially, they mistook the bones in the pits for the remains of
pronghorn or cattle that had become mired. The original Rancho La Brea land grant stipulated that the tar pits be open to the public for the use of the local
Pueblo. There were originally more than 100 separate pits of tar (or asphaltum) but most of those have been filled in with rock or dirt since settlement, leaving about a dozen accessible from ground level. In 1886, the first excavation for land pitch in the village of La Brea was undertaken by
Messrs Turnbull, Stewart & co..
Excavations report about the new discoveries in the pits
Union Oil geologist
W. W. Orcutt is credited, in 1901, with first recognizing that fossilized prehistoric animal bones were preserved in pools of asphalt on the Hancock ranch. In commemoration of Orcutt's initial discovery, paleontologists named the
La Brea coyote (
Canis latrans orcutti) in his honor.
John C. Merriam of the
University of California, Berkeley led much of the original work in this area early in the 20th century. Contemporary excavations of the bones started in 1913. In the 1940s and 1950s, public excitement was generated by the preparation of previously recovered large mammal bones. A subsequent study demonstrated the fossil vertebrate material was well preserved, with little evidence of bacterial degradation of bone protein. They are believed to be some 10–20,000 years old, dating from the
Last Glacial Period. On February 18, 2009, George C. Page Museum announced the 2006 discovery of 16 fossil deposits that had been removed from the ground during the construction of an underground parking garage for the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art next to the tar pits. Among the finds are remains of a
saber-toothed cat,
dire wolves, bison,
horses, a giant
ground sloth, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers, and an
American lion. Also discovered is a nearly intact mammoth skeleton, nicknamed Zed; the only pieces missing are a rear leg, a vertebra, and the top of its skull, which was sheared off by construction equipment in preparation to build the parking structure. These fossils were packaged in boxes at the construction site and moved to a compound behind Pit 91, on Page Museum property, so that construction could continue. Twenty-three large accumulations of tar and specimens were taken to the Page Museum. These deposits are worked on under the name "Project 23". As work for the public transit
D Line is
extended, museum researchers know more tar pits will be uncovered, for example near the intersection of Wilshire and Curson. ==George C. Page Museum== In 1913,
George Allan Hancock, the owner of Rancho La Brea, granted the
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County exclusive excavation rights at the Tar Pits for two years. In those two years, the museum was able to extract 750,000 specimens at 96 sites, guaranteeing that a large collection of fossils would remain consolidated and available to the community. Then in 1924, Hancock donated to Los Angeles County with the stipulation that the county provide for the preservation of the park and the exhibition of fossils found there. The area is part of urban Los Angeles in the
Miracle Mile District. The museum tells the story of the tar pits and presents specimens excavated from them. Visitors can walk around the park and see the tar pits. On the grounds of the park are life-sized models of prehistoric animals in or near the tar pits. Of more than 100 pits, only Pit 91 is still regularly excavated by researchers and can be seen at the Pit 91 viewing station. In addition to Pit 91, the one other ongoing excavation is called "Project 23". Paleontologists supervise and direct the work of volunteers at both sites. As a result of a design competition in 2019, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County chose
Weiss/Manfredi over
Dorte Mandrup and
Diller Scofidio + Renfro to redesign the park, including by adding a pedestrian walkway framing Lake Pitt, which is long. The museum is featured prominently in the 1992 cult classic film
Encino Man, where the title character recollects he was previously a caveman during his exploration of the museum's exhibits. ==Heritage site==