A LOOK BACK -- JERRY PERSON

I can’t believe that its time again for our city’s world-famous Fourth

of July parade -- one that always is the target of some type of

controversy.

This year, it is the closing of Pacific Coast Highway from 8th to Main

streets, and last year, it was having an elephant in the parade.

As if there were never any elephants in Huntington Beach before.

Just ask paleontologist J.W. Lytle of the Los Angeles County Museum.

In September 1926, workmen were digging out sand at T.G. Harriman’s sand

pit, near Gothard and Ellis streets, by the old La Bolsa Tile Works in

what was then an unincorperated part of the county.

While scooping out the sand, the men spotted part of a large tusk.

Harriman ordered that work be stopped in that section and he notified the

Long Beach Press-Telegram newspaper of the find.

The newspaper organized an exploration party and began slowly digging

out that ivory tusk. Included in that party were Lytle and museum

director William Alanson Bryan. The pit was dug to a depth of 35 feet

when the men uncovered what looked like a large bone, but close

examination revealed it to be a second ivory tusk that belonged to an

imperial elephant, the largest member in its family.

Lytle concluded that it was from an animal that walked the earth some

40,000 years to 200,000 years ago. In 1926, they didn’t have radiocarbon

dating to more accurately pinpoint the date.

This second tusk measured 16 feet long and eight inches in diameter.

This would mean that the animal was 12 to 15 feet tall. Work continued

well into the night and more bones were uncovered.

A large tooth, femur bone, toe bone, rib and several smaller bones

belonging to at least three prehistoric creatures were also found. More

digging continued the next day, but although more bones and a third tusk

were found, they were in very poor condition. After removing these bones

to the museum, Lytle and Bryan examined the find and believed the bones

may have washed down to the site by either a large flood or by heavy

rains.

Bryan concluded that the bones embedded in the coarse gravel and sand

were deposited there many thousands of years ago, and were that of an

early ancestor of the modern elephant.

Scientists had previously found elephant bones trapped in the black

tar at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, but not in the Huntington

Beach area. The Huntington Beach find put our town on the map, so to

speak, with the scientific community.

And don’t think that C.G. Reynolds, the city’s publicity director kept

that news a secret to the world. Newspapers across the country carried

the story of that prehistoric elephant find, and even today when you pick

up a newspaper, there are stories of someone uncovering some ancient

bones of a mammal or fish that lived in Orange County millions of years

ago.

And now you know that elephants were walking around Huntington Beach

maybe even in a long line, parade style, long before man got up on two

legs to put his own style of parade together.* JERRY PERSON is a local

historian and longtime Huntington Beach resident. If you have ideas for

future columns, write him at P.O. Box 7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.