Deane Dana Friendship Park’s hilltop location offers some of the most spectacular views of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in the entire Harbor Area.
The park also offers sports facilities, hiking trails and a nature center, all of which have been added in recent years.
In 1960, Los Angeles County purchased the 123-acre parcel of land which stretches from San Pedro across into neighboring Rancho Palos Verdes. The Friendship Park land remained completely undeveloped for decades, and area residents prized it for its wilderness feel.
Perhaps that’s why an early plan to rename it Cabrillo Historical Park and conduct a local “world’s fair” event displaying histories of local cultures never became a reality.
The park’s future as an undeveloped wilderness began to change in the mid-1960s, when ideas to develop the land in one way or another started to proliferate.
The first idea? Make the open land part of the new California State University campus approved for the South Bay/Harbor Area in 1960. Classes began at temporary locations in 1965 while CSU leaders tried to decide between three permanent sites.
The three sites: Friendship Park and some additional parcels in the South Shores area of San Pedro, land on the border between Torrance and Rolling Hills Estates, and the Carson site where the campus eventually was built.
In 1966, the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce proposed building an 18-hole golf course on the hilltop site. The County Board of Supervisors nixed the idea, saying the site was too small.
But the idea didn’t die. In 1972, supervisors okayed the construction of a smaller nine-hole course on the site. County parks department head Norman Johnson told the Los Angeles Times that he expected the course would open in Summer 1973.
After that proposal fizzled, the supervisors started on a novel track: developing the barren acreage into an actual park. $2 million was appropriated, and planning began in May 1974.
By 1980, the project was still in the planning phase. That October, it was announced that the construction of trails, picnic sites, a playground and restrooms would begin. Much of the land would remain undeveloped under the plan.
In 1987, the supervisors voted to rename the recreation area of the park from the San Pedro Recreation Center to the Martin Bogdanovich Recreation Center, after the founder of Star-Kist Tuna.
The park, still in somewhat of a spartan state despite the addition of soccer fields that same year, faced its biggest crisis in 1993. Los Angeles County faced a $1.6 billion budget deficit that year, the largest in its history. As a result, closures of county facilities had to be made.
The supervisors included Friendship Park on its list of 23 parks to be shuttered, along with Bodger Park in Hawthorne and Del Aire Park east of El Segundo. Fortunately, that worst-case scenario of abandoning the park was averted.
In February 1995, the supervisors voted to rename the park after one of their own, retiring Supervisor Deane Dana. Dana lived in Palos Verdes Estates, and enjoyed hiking in Friendship Park.
The park’s biggest controversy erupted a month later with the unveiling of plans to build a $4 million, 6,426-square-foot nature center at a highly visible location in the park to be named after Dana. Public reaction came swiftly, and harshly.
Residents and environmental activists mobilized quickly to express vigorous opposition to the plan at a series of often fiery meetings during the rest of 1995. Opponents filed a lawsuit opposing the center in early 1996. The project was put on hold.
Dana retired from the board later that year. His successor, Don Knabe, adopted a more conciliatory role toward the community, pledging to scale back the size of the nature center.
In September 1997, he announced a plan calling for a center with just under 4,000 square feet of floor space, to be built at a less conspicuous location in the park.
The supervisors signed on to the new plan in 1998, and opponents dropped their lawsuit. In February 2001, both groups gathered, peacefully this time, at the groundbreaking for the new center. The Deane Dana Friendship Park Nature Center officially opened on March 14, 2002. The dedication ceremony took place seven years after the center first was proposed.
The Bogadanovich Recreation Center portion of the park now includes a large playground, the soccer fields, a baseball field and an indoor gymnasium. And the park still has some of the best scenic vistas around.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
San Pedro News Pilot archives.
Torrance Press-Herald archives.
