[BifRayRock]

[QUOTE=Wig-Wag;6354370]

Originally Posted by BifRayRock

I am curious though, movies have depicted hobo/homeless/itinerant encampments, especially in the '30s, in and around rail yards. It is understandable why few in the media would cover this topic, except to highlight its eradication. Were there any well known camps in or near LA rail yards? Or would this describe virtually every blighted area? How often were riders able to avoid the Railroad police all the way to the Sherman/WHollywood Yards? (Probably no way to know) Come to think of it, street cars probably had to deal with their fair share of train hoppers, did the various street car lines have their own security force, or were they primarily reliant on LAPD or the Sheriff's Office?

BifRayRock, that is an interesting question. While there is a wealth of information on "riding the rails" and hobo jungles in print and on the internet, I do not recall ever coming across any documentation of specific camps in the LA area.

I suspect there are several reasons for this:

1. No one thought it important at the time to document these camps and many probably appeared and then disappeared when the authorities felt a given camp was posing sufficient problems to warrant breaking it up. Also, most of the camps would have been located near the three major rail yards, Southern Pacific's River Station/Bullring/Taylor and Alhambra yards, Santa Fe's 1st/6th Street yard and Union Pacific's East Los Angeles yard along Washington Boulevard.

2. The camps were not located in the yards themselves as those were patrolled by the railroad police and would have not been allowed to proliferate on company property. This also would have applied to Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railway which had their own security forces, supplemented when necessary by a call to local PD's.

3. SP's River Station Bullring and Taylor yards and Santa Fe's 1st/6th Street yards did lay alongside or were conveniently near the Los Angeles River. However, camps in this region were subject to flooding during winter rains so they would not have been permanent or even semi permanent locations.

Your post of the Veronica Lake photo from Gulliver's Travels might very well offer an avenue of research, however. If I recall correctly, one or more camps are shown in the film and also in some of the early Our Gang comedies on YouTube. Perhaps freezing these scenes would reveal their locations. Another source might be the The Hobo History Museum in Britt, Iowa. While it might have some information of value, again the transitory nature of such camps probably precludes any serious documentation.

Cheers,
Jack

Appreciate the considered response. There probably was never much demand for documenting bread lines or soup kitchens. It may have been news, but it hardly sold papers or magazines. Relief agencies were the best bet to document and extol their own efforts, but it was unlikely for anyone to get photos when things were dangerous. Bad times are sometimes best forgotten. (What Richfield Tower?)

It is easy to generalize, but Steinbeck and Guthrie had most down-on-their-luck folks attempting to get to LA. It was mostly fugitives "on the lam" who were hopping a train out of town. Not surprisingly, there were quite a number of charities that seem to have been forgotten. Still, there had to be many people on the streets, parks, backyards and campgrounds that could never be counted. (Where was General Delivery, anyhow?)




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