May 1969 - Angels Flight Railway Dismantled as Part of Bunker Hill Redevelopment

On May 18, 1969, downtown L.A.'s Angels Flight Railway was dismantled as part of the city's Bunker Hill Redevelopment project.

Built in 1901 by engineer and lawyer J.W. Eddy as the Los Angeles Incline Railway, the 315-foot funicular carried two counterbalanced passenger cars Sinai (north track) and Olivet (south track), which were named after two Biblical mountains, paralleling 3rd Street up and down Bunker Hill, connecting the residential neighborhood above with the retail and business district below. The last of a handful of incline railways around Los Angeles, it was long-billed as "The Shortest Railway In The World," functioning as one of L.A.'s top tourist attractions.

Developed in the 1860s by developer Prudent Beaudry, the Bunker Hill neighborhood was originally an affluent residential neighborhood marked by its characteristic Victorian homes and views of the mountains and ocean. By the 20th century, its wealthy residents moved elsewhere in Southern California and the neighborhood went into decline, its buildings declared as urban blight. Nearly a century after it was initially developed, in a controversial move, the City of Los Angeles declared it a redevelopment zone, displacing its residents -- primarily of color -- and razing most of its architecturally-significant Victorian homes, with only a lucky few transplanted to other locations.

By 1969, it was time for Angels Flight to leave -- at least temporarily. The original plan was to move the historic railway to another location "within three years" where it would be re-built and operate again. Instead, the railcars and station houses spent the next two-plus decades in exile in a Gardena storage yard.

In the 1990s, Angels Flight was finally rebuilt, using a new track structure, half a block to the south, as part of the California Plaza high-rise development. It re-opened on February 24, 1996. KCET's Huell Howser taped a special episode of "Visiting..." at the railway's re-opening celebration, and KCET's Women's Council organized a "First Night at Angels Flight" fundraising event that evening.

Since then, the line experienced two accidents, one in February 2001 which claimed the life of a tourist and injured seven others, resulting in the closure of the line for the next nine years; and a minor, injury-free derailment in 2013 that raised questions on some of the operating procedures used for the railway. As of this writing, the railway, though fully repaired, awaits approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to re-open.