Griffith Park to Re-Open Saturday

The jewel of the Los Angeles park system, closed since high winds knocked down dozens of trees, will re-open Saturday at 5 a.m., officials said.

Griffith park remained closed all day Friday, while officials assessed damaged from the week's windstorms and began a tedious cleanup effort.

““The hiking trails are closed, but the main roads through the park remain open,” said Andrea Epstein, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

The Greater Los Angeles Zoo and the Autry National Center remained open on Friday, but the Griffith Observatory was closed along with Travel Town, the carousel, and the pony and train rides.

The main road through the park from Victory Boulevard to Los Feliz Boulevard remained open to traffic, but other areas of the park were closed while cleanup crews fanned out to remove downed trees and branches.

Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa toured the park Friday morning in the aftermath of what he called “one of the worst windstorms in a generation.”

“Nobody expected to look at the number of trees and the size of the trees that fell,” he said.

He noted that most of the trees that were knocked down were pine or eucalyptus trees – and neither was of a kind native to Southern California.

"Mother Nature deals with man’s mistakes from time to time,” the mayor said.

Local

Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.