Mining millionaire paid $50,000 for land that became LA’s Griffith Park 14 years later

Photo credit (L-R): Wikimedia Commons; Visitcalifornia.com In 1882, mining millionaire Griffith J. Griffith paid $50,000 for 4,071 acres of ranchland in the Santa Monica Mountains, a purchase that would reshape Los Angeles for generations. Fourteen years later, in 1896, he donated 3,015 acres of that land to the city, creating what is now Griffith Park and setting aside the hillside that would later hold the Griffith Observatory. The gift transformed a private cattle ranch into one of the largest urban parks in the United States, providing open space, recreation and cultural institutions for a rapidly growing city, according to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and the Los Angeles Times.A ranch in the hills above Los AngelesThe land Griffith purchased was part of the Rancho Los Feliz, a sprawling Mexican-era grant that covered much of what is now central Los Angeles. At the time, the area was still largely rural, with oak woodlands, chaparral and grasslands covering the hills. Cattle grazed on the slopes, and the landscape bore little resemblance to the dense urban neighbourhoods that would later surround it.Griffith, a Welsh-born mining engineer who had made his f...