We are the volunteer caretakers of Elysian Park.
Our goal is to nurture the long-term sustainability of the park. To achieve that, we partner with LA Recreation and Parks and like-minded organizations to improve our beloved but underfunded park. If you or your organization wants to team up to maintain and defend this natural public space with planting projects, volunteer labor or financial gifts please get in touch! info@elysianpark.org
Our Areas of Focus:
Gardening Workdays
We regularly maintain special sections of the park through volunteer gardening workdays. These events not only sustain the ecological viability of these spaces but encourage community in an era of screens and isolation. Come join us, we love meeting new neighbors and seeing familiar faces!
Park Activation
We push to “activate” underused areas of the park by working with LA Rec and Parks to build new amenities. With underuse comes unhoused encampments and unfortunately encampmets pose a grave fire risk to the park. Radio Hill in Solano Canyon is set ablaze on a regular basis, threatening adjaent homes.
Recent projects that aim to bring in more activity to the park are: Chavez Ridge Disc Golf Course, the soccer field at Solano Canyon, and the basketball court at Walnut Hill. We are working to repair the Children’s Arboretum and turn Chavez Ravine into an accredited Arboretum, install pickeball or bocce in the upper sections of Walnut Hill.
Fighting Development
We’re continuing our founder Grace E. Simons’ mission to fight commercialization schemes. Developers are constantly scheming to privatize public lands as instruments for their own gain. It has been so from the beginning. It is a constant battle to defend and preserve this natural PUBLIC space for the enjoyment of ALL.
Identifying Park Problems
We discover and relay problems to Rec and Parks (vandalism, trail damage, downed trees, etc.). Los Angeles is a metropolitan area that comes with metropolitan problems, like graffiti. We address what we can on our own but are constantly relaying issues to the Park Rangers as well. Many of the aging trees in Elysian Park are at the end of their natural lifecycles and in need of removal. There are of course disease identification, and infestation issues. And there are always trail repair and creation concerns.
Amplifying City Policy Changes
Our team identifies and broadcasts governmental issues and proposals that affect the park. For exapmle, in 2026 Los Angeles embarked on rewriting the City Charter. Through mail and social media we encouraged survey participation, relayed the progress of study findings. We joined other park organizations to successfully ensure City Council got increased park funding on the November ballot. When voters pass it, the measure guarantees parks will be receive 0.065% (of the total city budget, for all LA city parks). This is a doubling of the previous percentage, and will be written into the new City Charter.
Maintaining Partnerships
We’ve partnered with other local steward orgs to increase native plantings and wildlife in the park. The LA Parks Foundation provided us with native seedlings to establish a section at Victory Memorial Grove next to where Project Monarch set up a habitat. Test Plot holds volunteer workdays twice a month. The “Burn Scar” plots are at the site of a wildfire in 2023. And the original “Elysian” Test Plots are in areas near the dog water station at the peak of the West Loop Trail. We help get the word out on social media, coordinate efforts with RAP and contribute muscle on the workdays.
We were founded in 1965 by neighbor and activist Grace E. Simons.
Simons, a local resident and park user, founded our organization in 1965 to combat the construction of a convention center in the park. The Citizen’s Committee to Save Elysian Park, guided by Simons’ sound legal arguments and fierce letter-writing campaign, swayed public opinion and proved effective to prevent the construction project.
This wasn’t the first time the park had been threatened — nor would it be the last. Despite the fact that city charter provisions were enacted to protect the park in perpetuity, the allure of so much raw land adjacent to downtown has proved irresistible. Countless efforts have been made over the years to develop park property. Some have been successful, such as the bi-furcation of the park by the Pasadena Freeway (1930-1936) and the installation of the Police Academy and its later expansion (1967-72 and 1986-96). Dodger Stadium also was built upon a parcel of land that included both park property and Chavez Ravine, a neighborhood of Mexican-Americans whose residents were displaced to make room for the ballpark in the 1950s.
Simons, a former reporter and editor for the California Eagle newspaper, dedicated the next 20 years of her life to the preservation of the park. She knew residents couldn’t simply sit on the sidelines and watch Elysian Park get smaller and smaller. She rallied her colleagues with these words:
“To protect the city’s parks, neighborhoods and quality of life, you must be vigilant and you must organize.”
Today the Friends of Elysian Park (formerly known as the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park) faithfully carries her legacy, pushing back on a variety of proposals such as an airport, oil wells, a trade center, several condominium projects, a zip line, two football stadiums and more. We’re an entirely volunteer-run organization, united by a common desire to protect and preserve Elysian Park.