Bee Canyon and O'Melveny Park

Los Angeles | California

What We Did
Provide expansive green space in one of America’s largest cities—our first-ever land protection project.

Our Goal
Ensure Angelenos have access to a quality parks so they can connect with the outdoors and each other.

Support Our Work in California

A large city lies below a green overlook and a blue sky with white clouds overhead.

Bee Canyon and O'Melveny Park by the Numbers

3.8M

residents served

2nd

largest city-owned park in L.A.

672

acres protected

1973

year acquired

Setting the Course for TPL's First 50 Years

John O’Melveny once said, “I want to be remembered as working at my office, roping cattle, and judging bulldogs.” Despite that wish, his name is perhaps most associated with an eponymous Los Angeles park that figures largely in Trust for Public Land history.

In the organization’s early days, its cofounders received a call from an attorney for O’Melveny, who owned a large ranch on the north side of the San Fernando Valley. The attorney said that O’Melveny was doing some estate planning and wanted to protect his land, set in Bee Canyon, from future development—in fact, he wanted a park created on the property.

TPL cofounder Greg Archbald went to Los Angeles to work out a deal with O’Melveny’s attorneys and the city council. Ultimately, the land became part of 672-acre O’Melveny Park, L.A.’s second-largest municipal park. Set among rocky ledges, shrubland, grassy meadows, and citrus groves on the eastern end of the Santa Susana Mountains, the Bee Canyon acquisition, completed in 1973, is considered TPL’s first project.

It’s also a longstanding testament to TPL’s vision to bring nature to urban residents. It led to dozens of new green spaces in park-deprived neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles—and, eventually, California and beyond, to urban, suburban, and rural areas across the country.

At 2,000 feet, the view from O’Melveny Park stretches from the clay rooftops of Grenada Hills to the hazy outline of downtown Los Angeles. It provides nature lovers with a different perspective on the city and will forever exemplify our cofounders’ novel idea to marry land conservation and public accessibility.

About This Project

Get in Touch with Our California Team

Los Angeles Office

135 West Green Street
2nd Floor
Pasadena, CA, 91105
(323) 223-0441
losangeles@tpl.org

Sacramento Office

1107 9th Street
Suite 1050
Sacramento, CA, 95814
(916) 557-1673
sacramento@tpl.org

San Francisco Office

23 Geary Street
Suite 1000
San Francisco, CA, 94108
(415) 495-4014
sanfrancisco@tpl.org

Guillermo Rodriguez

Vice President Pacific Region, California State Director

415-800-5267
california@tpl.org