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Doheny's early career

Doheny graduated from high school at age 15 as the valedictorian of his class. Following his father’s death several months after his graduation, he was employed by the U.S. Geological Survey, and in 1873 was sent to Kansas with a party surveying and subdividing the Kiowa-Comanche lands. The following year he left the Geological Survey to pursue his fortune prospecting, first in the Black Hills of South Dakota and then in Arizona Territory. By 1880 he was in the Black Mountains of southwestern New Mexico, then part of Arizona Territory, living in the rough, silver- mining town of Kingston, prospecting, mining, and buying and trading mining claims. During his time in Kingston he met two men who would play important roles in his later life—Albert Fall, the future Secretary of the Interior, and his business partner Charles A. Canfield. It was also during this time that he met and married his first wife, Carrie Louella Wilkins, on August 7, 1883.

Doheny and Canfield together worked the former’s Mount Chief Mine with little success, and thus in 1886 Canfield prospected further in the Kingston area, leasing and developing with great success the Comstock Mine, not to be confused with the Comstock Lode of Virginia City, Nevada. Doheny declined to join him in this venture, and whereas Canfield made a small fortune from it, Doheny was reduced eventually to doing odd jobs to support his family.

In the Spring of 1891, Doheny left New Mexico with his wife and daughter, and moved to Los Angeles, attracted by Canfield’s success in Los Angeles real estate. Canfield had previously left New Mexico with $110,000 in cash from his Comstock Mine venture, a sum that he parlayed into extensive real estate holdings during the Los Angeles boom of the later 1880s. With the collapse of the speculative fever, lost his wealth and land holdings and by the time Doheny arrived in Los Angeles in 1891, Canfield was deeply in debt. Briefly they tried their prospecting luck in San Diego, forming there the Pacific Gold and Silver Extracting Company, but returned to Los Angeles soon thereafter without achieving success. [Begin here the existing text.]

Discovery of the Los Angeles City oil field

Doheny was attracted by a prominent seep located at XXX, and with $400 borrowed from friend and former mining associate Charles A. Canfield, purchased a lot at the northeast corner of XX and XX. On November 4, 1892, they began digging a four-by-six foot shaft with pick and shovel, shoring it up with timbers as they dug. At a depth of 155, the presence of oil and gas prevented further digging by hand and the well was completed using a eucalyptus log as a percussion bit. Upon its completion after 40 days, the well initially produced seven barrels per day of 14-degree gravity petroleum.

Although Doheny can be credited with the effective discovery of the Los Angles City oil field and initiating the subsequent southern California oil boom, his was not the first well in the field. As early as 1857, a well was dug to an unknown depth in the western portion of the field south and west of Coronado and Third Streets. Locally known as the Dryden well, it produced considerable amounts of heavy oil initially and then, over the next 35 years, minor amounts of tar and brea, which was sold to the City of Los Angeles for $2 a ton to oil the city streets. A later, and unsuccessful, attempt in 1865 was made to obtain petroleum from a well dug to 390 feet at the corner of Temple and Boylston Streets. Around 1890, two groups of wells were drilled, nine in the Maltman tract in the northwest portion of the field, and twelve in the Ruhland tract a few blocks west of the oil seeps at Westlake (now MacArthur) Park. The relatively small production from both groups of wells discouraged further exploration in the western portion of the field.

Nu Alpha Phi (Pomona College) for working revision

ΝΑΦ, (Nu Alpha Phi, Nappy, Nappies) is a non-national, co-educational fraternal organization of Pomona College in Claremont, California. Originally founded in 1920 as an all-male organization to promote brotherhood in Christ; Christian brotherhood is no longer a part of the organization, and since 1976[1], it has been co-educational, welcoming brothers and sisters from diverse creeds and origins. Nappy provides opportunities to learn about responsibility, give back to the community, and socialize under the fraternal and sororal auspices of the organization. Nu Alpha Phi continues to grow and spread its brotherhood across the nation, positively impacting the surrounding communities.

Downey history

In 1784, Governor Pedro Fages granted to former solider Manuel Nieto (1734-1804) the largest of the land concessions made during the Spanish control of California. Its 300,000 acres (1,200 km²) stretched from the Santa Ana River on the east to the Old San Gabriel River (now the Rio Hondo and Los Angeles River) on the west, and from the mission highway (approximately Whittier Boulevard) on the north to the ocean on the south. Its acreage was slightly reduced later at the insistence of Mission San Gabriel on whose lands it infringed. The Spanish concessions, of which 25 were made in California, were unlike the later Mexican land grants in that title was not transferred, but were similar to grazing permits with the title remaining with the Spanish crown.

The Rancho Los Nietos passed to Manuel Nieto's four children upon his death and remained intact until, in 1833, his heirs petitioned Mexican Governor José Figueroa to partition the property. The northwestern portion of the original rancho, comprising the Downey-Norwalk area, was granted as Rancho Santa Gertrudes to Josefa Cota, the widow of Manuel's son, Antonio Nieto. At approximately 21,000 acres (85 km²), Santa Gertrudes was itself a sizable rancho and conatined the old Nietos homestead, which was a center of social life east of the pueblo of Los Angeles.

History of Forest Falls

As early as the 1830's, Mill Creek Canyon was the site of lumber cutting. The canyon's name originates from two subsequent sawmills--Daniel Saxton's, erected in 1852 and located at its mouth, and from the Mormon Mill, established in 1853 at a site just below today's Forest Falls. The first permanent resident in the canyon was Peter Forsee, whose built a cabin and planted an apple orchard in 1868 in the lower canyon just above its confluence with Mountain Home Creek. Initial residential and resort development occured in this area of the lower canyon the in 1880's.

Resort development in the upper canyon began in 1898 when former hotelman Thomas Aker opened a tent camp on 160 acres he patented in 1888 plus an additional 60 acres he purchased. He called his resort Aker's Camp and hired Thomas Dobbs and the Vivian brothers, Albert and Martin, to construct trails for his guests, including one to the top of San Gorgonio Mountain.

Wildfire

Fire is a natural component of the chaparral ecosystem, and the plants that comprise it are largely adapted to survive fire or to reproduce after it. More specifically, the members of this plant community are adapted to a particular fire regime, which is characterized by intensity and seasonality, but most importantly, by the frequency of fire. It has been estimated the chaparral plant community can persist over the long term only with a fire frequency at a given site of no shorter than several decades, or perhpas longer, although there is variability in the tolerance of different species. Repeated shorter intervals between fires promote so-called "type conversion" in which the shrubby species are replaced by grasses, particularly non-native grasses and other weedy species.

The Verdugo Mountains have been subject to repeated wildfires in historical times. Major occurrences in the twentieth century include the December, 1927 Burbank Canyon Fire, which acutally started in Haines Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains and burned south into the range, consuming approximately 100 homes in Burbank's Sunset Canyon. The La Tuna Canyon Fire of November, 1955 burned over almost the entire western portion of the range, ultimately destroying approximately 4,500 acres (1,800 ha). The Whiting Woods Fire of March, 1964, started by a power line downed by high winds, burned from the northern edge of the range southward over to crest to consume homes in Glendale. A fire in November, 1980, also called the La Tuna Canyon Fire, burned 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) in the northern and western portions of the range. Since 2000, two major fires have occurred in the Verdugo Mountains. In September, 2002, the Mountain Fire burned over two days approximately 750 acres (300 ha) above Glendale, largely on the southern side of the range. The Harvard Fire started on September 29, 2005 and consumed 1,024 acres (414 ha) both north and south sides of the range north of Burbank during a six-day period.

Beginning in 1921, the Los Angeles County Fire Department began a county-side program of building fire breaks (or more properly, fuel breaks) to slow the spread of fire, and by 1923 the initial breaks had been constructed in the Verdugos. In 1934, the City of Glendale built a 60-ft lookout tower on Verdugo Peak, which was staffed with an observer until it closed in the mid-1950's. In order to conduct the work necessary to build fire breaks and roads, temporary construction camps were located throughout the fire-prone areas of the county. In the Verdugo Mountains, Construction Camp #2 was located in the lower reaches of Deer Canyon, at the end of present-day Beaudry Blvd, for a period during the late 1930's and early 1940's. It is difficult to determine from published sources the dates of construction for the fire roads so important to present-day recreation use of the mountains. The report of the 1955 La Tuna Canyon fire, however, indicates that at least some of these roads were in place by that date.

Geology of the Verdugo Mountains

The Verdugo Mountains are comprised of an east-west-trending antiformal fault block, bounded on south by the Verdugo Fault, a north-dipping reverse fault, and on the north by the Sierra Madre thrust fault near the front of the San Gabriel Mountains, thus including the sediment-covered Crescenta Valley within the Verdugo Mountains Block. The Verdugo Fault lies slightly south of the topographic range front and is completely covered by sediments. The rocks within the Verdugo Mountains block are almost entirely of igneous and metamorphic rocks similar to the crystalline basement rocks exposed to the north in that portion of the San Gabriel Mountains south of the San Gabriel Fault. These rocks consist of gneiss, and gneissic diorite and quartz diorite, intruded by irregular bodies of equigranular granitic rocks, predominantly quartz diorite and granodiorite, with accompanying pegmatite and aplite. Exposed rocks in the Shadow Hills neighborhood at the extreme northwestern end of the Verdugos are typically marine sedimentary rocks of Miocene age, predominantly sandstone and shale.

The Verdugo Mountains are part of the western Transverse Ranges, which have risen in the last 7 million years as the result of contractional deformation resulting from transpressional motion and rotation of crustal blocks in the "Big Bend" region of the San Andreas Fault. The amount of crustal shortening since the beginning of the Pliocene has been estimated to be on the order of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). The Verdugo fault and Sierra Madre thrust are part of a complex system of faults that accommodate some of this shortening and generally become younger to the south, with the Verdugo Fault possibly being the yougest of this system and forming the current boundary between this portion of the western Transverse Ranges and the Los Angeles basin. Uplift along the Verdugo fault may total approximately 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi), at a minimum rate of 1.1 kilometres (0.68 mi) per million years since 2.3 million years ago., moving the crystalline rocks of the Verdugo Mountains up and over younger Tertiary and Quaternary sedimments to the south. The Verdugos are thus a young and rapidly rising mountain range, reflected in their steep topography and rapid rates of erosion.

History of the KOIN Center

The building was originally named Fountain Plaza, but it quickly came to be known as the KOIN Center, or KOIN Tower, reflecting the name of its highest-profile occupant, KOIN television, the CBS affiliate in Portland. The building was controversial while being constructed because its location blocked the view of Mount Hood that had long been seen by drivers emerging from the Vista Ridge Tunnel under Portland's West Hills going eastbound on U.S. Route 26.

The KOIN Center was the first building completed in a projected three-block development that was to include the city blocks immediately to north and east. The latter was the long-time location of the KOIN television studios, which relocated to the KOIN Center upon its completion. Of the additional projected buildings, only the Essex House apartments, occupying half of the northern block facing SW Third Avenue was completed, in 1992. A 15-story office building on the eastern block, "100 Columbia," was proposed but construction never commenced. This project has now been cancelled.

The building was sold on July 3, 2007, to a group of California investors for US$109 million. In August 2009, these investors, including the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and CommonWealth partners, surrendered control of the KOIN Center after defaulting on their mortgage of US$70 million from the New York Life Insurance Company. The condos on the upper floors are owned separately and were unaffected by the default. In December 2009, Portland-based American Pacific International Capital purchased the office portion of the building for between $50 and $60 million, approximately half the US$109 million paid by CalPERS in 2007.

The Portland Development Commission (PDC) had a number of goals in sponsoring the Fountain Plaza project. One was to provide a link between the government and office-building core of downtown and the nearly completed South Auditorium redevelopment district immediately to the south. This redevelopment project, initiated in 1960, had been the first for the PDC and, though controversial at the time, has been considered by some to be one of the nation's few successful such projects from that era. Reflecting that goal, the southeast retail and theater entrance to the KOIN Center faces its own street-corner plaza diagonally across the intersection from the Ira C. Keller Fountain, making a visual and pedestrian connection that important public space. The Keller Fountain, built in 1970 and originally called the Forecourt Fountain in reference to the adjacent Municipal (now Keller) Auditorium was called by New York Times architecture critic "the greatest open space since the Renaissance." It is this fountain that gave the name to the KOIN Center project. A second goal of the PDC in proposing this mixed use building was to promote the type of condominium apartment living common in the central business districts of large cities such as New York and Chicago but not in Portland at the time.

The firm of Olympia & York of Oregon, a joint venture of Olympia & York Properties of Toronto and Arnon Corporation, both Canadian-owned, won the PDC competition for the Fountain Plaza Project and completed the building. Between 1992 and 1995, the real estate holdings of Olympia & York of Toronto were auctioned off in bankruptcy court, with the KOIN center going to an ownership group headed by the Louis Dreyfus Property Group.

Design

The KOIN Center occupies an entire city block and is clad in orange brick and trimmed with white limestone at the base; the sloping roof forming the pyramidal crown is prefinished galvanized steel. The ziggurat-like profile and blue crown sets it apart from most of the other buildings in the downtown Portland area and gives it an instantly recognizable appearance, "one of the most important things a downtown skyscraper can accomplish." The step backs in its footprint with increasing height and its multi-faceted form are reminiscent of the Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920's, leading some commentators to describe its architecture as Neo-Art Deco.

In addition to the KOIN broadcast studios and offices below grade, the building has three principal functional progams, each with its own entrance and distinctive facade--commercial/office on SW Columbia Street, retail and (formerly) theater space on the southwest corner, and residential condominiums on SW Third Avenue. In addition, a restaurant space occupied by Morton's Steakhouse has its entrance on SW Clay Street. Thus, the building relates to its surroundings in several distinct ways. Of these, most important is the southwest corner as an extension of the public space represented by the Keller Fountain and adjacent Keller Auditorium. A feature unique in Portland, and resulting from the multi-block nature of the original project, is location of the entrance to the underground parking and loading docks on the adjacent block to the east. This spares any of the four street frontages from accommodating a parking entrance or loading dock, a distinct design advantage for a building on one of the small 200 ft-by-200 ft blocks typical of downtown Portland.

References

• [2] Oak Leaf, December 1996. Retrieved on 05-09-08.