There are places on earth that are simply unique – and yet it happens that one doesn’t hear about them at all. It was by mere coincidence that I watched a TV series with my husband that I learned about a place in the middle of Los Angeles that is such a unique destination, and ever since it has been on my bucket list. Well, on the last day of October this year, my husband and I took a bus from our hotel in L.A. and found this National Natural Landmark called La Brea Tar Pits on the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Avenue. And I’m so glad to have explored this fascinating place!
The bus stop is just outside the gates of Hancock Park, the site that was donated to the county by George Allan Hancock in 1924. He had inherited the La Brea Ranch (brea being the Spanish word for tar) in the late 1880s and dug for oil in that area. Before him, the indigenous people had used the “tar” to seal wooden boats, and a Spanish mission had used it for sealing its roof. Now, you definitely DO smell the tarry note on the air, and when you walk towards the park’s lake near the entrance, you can see bubbles and mini-geysers rise from the oily water; it’s methane gas that causes these little eruptions. And if you look at the lawn that separates the lake from the museum on site, you might discover some crude oil seeping up from the Salt Lake Oil Field that lies underneath the entire neighborhood!
What makes La Brea so special apart from being part of an oil field with black goo visible in various parts, though? Hancock’s digging brought up bones. Whereas first, people thought it had been farmstock that had drowned in the asphalt (which is the unrefined version of tar, by the way), the shape and size of some bones soon enough puzzled geologists. It became clear that in prehistoric times animals had wandered towards the pits, and gotten stuck in the heavy goo. They died a horribly slow death, sinking in, and the more they struggled, the more entrapped they became. Ironically, the same happened to predators who wanted to feed off these poor creatures. The pits became a predator trap.
To this day, scientists collect tons of fossil bones from the pits and bring them to the lab in the museum on the premises. The exhibits in there are mind-blowing – from tiny shells that prove that the area had fresh water to colossal saber tigers, giant sloths, and a near-complete Columbian mammoth. And goo. You can actually try out how hard it is to pull something out of the asphalt, but how fast it sinks back in, again. Also, visitors can communicate to lab scientists through big windows and watch how they work with the bones, and which animals these bones belong to. If you want to get a first-hand experience at working with the La Brea Tar Pit fossils, you can volunteer at the lab and help clean them. It is tough work, of course, so volunteers never work more than three or four hours at a time. But it surely is rewarding as it helps scientists tell us all so much more about the prehistoric Ice Age animals and – believe it or not – about the climate change they experienced. The atrium inside offers visitors a glimpse into the plants of those days as well as a quiet area to rest and contemplate.
If YOU ever go to Los Angeles, try and make the time there to visit the La Brea tar pits and museum! It’s some gooey eye-opener and a way to time-travel without more than the cost of a bus ticket and a convenient walk around the park and museum. Way easier than the TV series wants to make you believe – and with a guaranteed return to the present, at that.
