The Ostrich Farm Railway

Today Silver Lake is, by most accounts, moderately well served by mass transit. The website, Walk Score, gives Silver Lake a transit score of 54 out of a possible 100. Thanks to Metro’s 2, 4, 92, 96, 182, and 603 lines, part of Primrose Hill is the only part of Silver Lake more than half a mile from a Metro route. On the other hand, most buses arrive infrequently, even the best bus stops are rudimentary, and the neighborhood lacks even a single dedicated bus-lane. There has also been a complete absence of rail transit in Silver Lake since the 1950s, when the Glendale-Burbank, San Fernando, and Subway-Hollywood lines all ended service. After a recent appearance on KPCC/LAist’s program, How to LA, in which I discussed our mass transit, another historic Silver Lake transit line came up as we rode down Sunset Boulevard — the Ostrich Farm Railway. Afterward, several people asked to hear more about that.  

Our story begins in 1881, when a former physician in the British Army living in Cape Town, Charles Jarom Sketchley, hatched an idea to import ostriches to the US. Ostrich feathers were then very much in demand for feather boas, fans, and hats. He set out from South Africa with 200 ostriches in December 1882 and arrived in New York City before taking a train to Los Angeles County. By the end of the journey, 178 of the birds had died, leaving just 22 to live on his ranch in what’s now Orange County. These were the first ostriches in the country, and naturally, they attracted both gawkers and feather thieves. Sketchley made a bit of additional profit by charging fifty cents to visitors on Wednesdays and Sundays. It was a success, attracting hundreds of visitors most days.

View of a man with a group ostriches at the Kenilworth Ostrich Farm, showing hills in the background (California Historical Society)

In 1885, Sketchley relocated the ostrich operation to Griffith J. Griffith’s Rancho Los Feliz, where he partnered with Elizabeth Laver, Frank Burkett, Granville P. Beauchamp, and Randolph Stracey. It was named the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm and Zoological Garden. A new refreshment stand offered “liquors, wines, cigars and eatables.” In order to visit the farm, though, visitors had to board the Temple Street Cable Railway, disembark at its terminus, and then transfer to a horse-drawn carriage that would convey them the rest of the way. Into this picture stepped another enterprising businessman, real estate speculator Moses Langley Wicks. In November 1886, Wicks obtained permission from City Council to construct a railway from the Sisters’ Hospital in Victor Heights directly to the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm.

Before the railway was even completed, however, it was taken over by the Los Angeles County Railway Company. “The Cut,” that marks the border between Echo Park and Silver Lake, on Sunset Boulevard, was blasted into the sandstone hills to make way for the train. At what’s now Sunset Triangle Plaza, the railway turned up what’s now Griffith Park Boulevard. The ostrich farm was renamed the Kenilworth Ostrich Farm in 1887. The railway arrived at the ostrich farm, in the Crystal Springs area, on 24 September 1888. 

Detail of Map of the City of Los Angeles, 1887, depicting the route of the Ostrich Farm Railway

Cabinet card by J. T. Bertrand Studio depicting a man at and ostriches at the Ostrich Farm

Unfortunately, the Ostrich Farm never really took flight. Beauchamp and Sketchley sued Stracey for having a relationship with a woman named Govinda, whose Indian ethnicity, they claimed, brought them all “scandal and reproach” and was therefore detrimental to the ostrich farm’s success. Laver sued Sketchley and Beauchamp. Burkett and Griffith had a falling out, too, to put it mildly. The former shot the latter with a shotgun before killing himself with a revolver. The Los Angeles Ostrich Farm closed in 1889. Sketchley took his share of the ostriches and moved with them to a farm outside of Red Bluff. The surrounding area became Griffith Park in 1896. The ostrich farm railway was eventually absorbed in the Pacific Electric Railway. Much of its route became Sunset Boulevard in 1904. 

Ostrich Farm Railway’s Dummy Line, 1892, Los Angeles Public Library

While the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm and its railway may’ve been short-lived, it was influential. By 1910, there were ten other local ostrich farms; and they — along with an alligator farm and even a pigeon farm — remained popular local attractions in Los Angeles’s pre-amusement park landscape. The Griffith Park Zoo opened near the site of the former ostrich farm in 1912. The farm’s founder, Dr. Charles J. Sketchley, died in 1916. 

View of the Farm (Detail of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper illustration)

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper 1888