On the Burma Road … Local Nature and History

I trust that somewhere near you is a scene, a park, a path you visit from time to time in different seasons, at different times of day. It might have a spectacular view, beautifully groomed gardens, or simply be a quiet place you consider “yours.” You’re all travelers, and I think that canny travelers know that no matter how many times we go somewhere, there’s always something new to be seen, even if it’s nothing more than how the foliage changes with the year or how a place looks in early morning, contrasted with late afternoon.

The Counselor and I hiked one of our places like that today: Burma Road.

Once a farm road, Burma Road is actually a continuation of Crenshaw Boulevard, which heads directly south from near downtown Los Angeles, about 25 miles to the north. As you can see, the “road” is a drivable one, although it’s now traveled in vehicles only by park rangers, utility crews and emergency crews, as we saw a few years ago when there was a brush fire in the area:

For the rest of us, it’s a popular hike, a broad, hilly route through coastal sage environment. Here’s the view from near the start of the hike today, high on the headland of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, looking southeast, Burma Road curving below.

Burma Road winds 4.7 miles with a 1,000 foot descent to the bluffs at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. We’re headed that way, but we won’t go the entire distance.

That folded landscape is eroded and collapsed, slowly sliding toward the ocean. Here in late May of a dry year, there are only a few patches of bright green. After last year’s record rainfall in southern California, it would have looked entirely different at this time, carpeted with wildly lush vegetation, including grasses and weeds eight feet high. This year’s browner view, product of much less rainfall, is more typical. We did, however, find a patch of the state flower, the California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica), strutting its stuff.

It’s not wild land. It’s a nature preserve, protected now from the development you can see in the distance of the above photo, as well as in this one, shot from farther down the trail, looking southwest.

In 1846, when this was Alta California, part of Mexico, the peninsula was included in a land grant, and the then nearly-treeless land was a vast cattle ranch. In the 1880s, part of the United States, the land was leased to farmers of Japanese origin, who successfully introduced dry land farming on much of the peninsula

Now this area is one of a string of nature preserves along the peninsula. This one is Portuguese Bend Reserve, administered by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. Officially described as “coastal sage habitat,” it’s home to numerous mammals, reptiles and birds, including the threatened California Gnatcatcher and the Cactus Wren. The largest mammal is the coyote, although it has competing predators, including fox and bobcats, not to mention several winged raptors.

There was low cloud over the ocean today, obscuring the view of Santa Catalina Island, visible on clearer days, as in this photograph.

About a dozen trails lead away from Burma Road, threading across the reserve’s canyons and ridges. All are interesting, some a bit more than moderately challenging in places where they encounter the steeper slopes, like this one, Water Tank Trail. Easy to get down, but a stiff climb in summer when the temperature often reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

As you can see indicated on this trail sign for Ishibashi Trail, bicycles and equestrians share some of the trails with hikers.

Some Local History — and Prehistory

There’s more to consider while hiking the reserve than nature, although one could focus entirely on the view, climate, flora and fauna. I started my description of local history with that 1846 land grant, but the peninsula had been home to human beings for at least 5,000 years before the Spanish arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Tribes named the Tongva were hunter-gatherers, and lived off fish and shellfish from the shore, as well as wild fruit and nuts collected on land. They had basketmaking and pottery crafts, as well.

Much of the Land Conservancy’s efforts, in addition to preservation, are focused on restoring wild habitat to the reserves, which are heavily overrun with invasive species, exacerbated by the landscaping the tens of thousands of us who live here have introduced. We don’t see the same landscape the Tongvans inhabited.

As students of American history can anticipate, the Tongvans didn’t survive the advent of European settlement. They’re extinct, victims of the same treatment natives received across the continent from invaders with firearms, superior technology, and a radically different view of humankind.

Another group of people now absent from the reserve land are those farmers of Japanese descent who established thriving farms on the steep hillsides you see in the photos.

Again, students of history will anticipate me. The farmers who leased the land were among the 110,000 or more individuals of Japanese descent ordered to internment camps by Executive Order 9066 in 1942, responding to concern that they represented an internal security threat during WWII, even though 62% of them were U.S. citizens. Most of the farmers never returned.

There were exceptions. About six families returned, including the Ishibashis, whose forebears, brothers Tomesco and Kumekichi Ishibashi, had emigrated from Japan in 1910 and leased land here. Their crops included avocados, poppies, strawberries, carrots, beets and sweet peas. They maintained a roadside produce stand, Annie’s Stand, near Abalone Cove, below the area that’s now the reserve. The Ishibashi family operated their farm until 2012, and their departure signaled the end of that era.

That is why we now hike a trail named Ishibashi.

Nothing is simple. The land remains. Sometimes we save a little of it, although some things are always lost.

What’s your favorite local walk? What stories does it have to tell you? Leave a comment.

© Brad Nixon 2018. Ishibashi family farm information from DailyBreeze.com, published July 14, 2011, retrieved May 28, 2018. California poppy photo © M. Vincent 2018, used by kind permission.