Thursday, June 20, 2013

History set in stone

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My wife and I were at one of our favorite restaurants, The Marketplace on Florence and Tweedy, when we decided to take a walk before dinner. We like walking through the neighborhoods of Downey so we started up Tweedy. We came upon this monolith and decided it must be something of historical significance. My sources tell me it is a marker describing the path to Los Angeles going through Downey.

I need to do a little more digging to find out what the numbers mean and what has been removed that used to be next to the stone.

5 comments:

  1. This is a 12-mile marker. You can see the 13-mile marker next to the Rives Mansion: http://www.downeydailyphotos.com/2011/01/approaching-los-angeles.html

    Rumor has it that there is another marker on Imperial Hwy in Norwalk about 1 block east of Firestone, on the north side of the street just down from the Keystone Bowl.

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  2. That's a marker for the old San Diego Road. (S.D.R.). I thought I'd read somewhere that it measured the distance from the L.A. Courthouse to San Diego, but I can't find anything to verify that.

    Here's marker 13, which I believe is on 3rd, directly in front of Rives Mansion

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcworshipperclan/5070907052/

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  3. Oh god I just noticed the brass plaque's been stolen. That's shameful. Here's my image of the plaque

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/lomara/145766313/

    ReplyDelete
  4. The plaque was stolen (burned off with a torch) sometime in the last year. My wife and I live on the next block, and saw that it was missing 6-8 months ago. We reported it to the police. There was quite a mess left when it was first taken.

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