Exposition Park Rose Garden

Beginning in 1872, Los Angeles used the 160-acre Agricultural Park to showcase the county’s rich and varied crops, while crowds also came for races involving horses, camels, dogs, bicycles, and eventually automobiles. Over time, drinking, gambling, and prostitution overshadowed the agricultural displays, prompting William Miller Bowen, a 37-year-old attorney, USC law school professor, and devout Methodist, to begin a decade-long campaign after seeing the park’s corrupting influences in 1898. Elected to the City Council in 1901, Bowen helped end gambling and racing there, though the park remained a venue for automotive spectacle, including Barney Oldfield’s 1903 world-record lap in 55 seconds and a 1906 staged locomotive collision watched by about 25,000 people. In 1909, under pressure from Bowen, the California 6th District Agricultural Association and the City and County of Los Angeles agreed to redevelop the park, and by 1910 the saloons and brothels were gone. Plans then created the State Exhibition Building, the State Armory Building, and the Natural History Museum, and by 1913 the grounds were known as Exposition Park. The Exposition Park Rose Garden opened in 1928 as a sunken garden with a few trees, a walkway meeting in a central circle, and 15,793 donated rose bushes, and it has since remained under the Los Angeles City Department of Recreation and Parks as the second largest garden of its kind in California and a site on the National Register of Historic Places.

Los Angeles, California · United States