The Emerald Necklace is a vision for a 17 mile loop of parks and greenways connecting 10 cities and nearly 500,000 residents along the Río Hondo and San Gabriel Rivers. Nestled in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley, it will provide desperately needed recreational areas for communities suffering from obesity, asthma, and extreme density. It has the potential to become a world-class new park network on the scale of Central Park in New York and will be a significant piece of the vision for an urban L.A. connected by river greenways conceived by Central Park’s progenitor, Fredrick Law Olmsted. The Emerald Necklace will unify more than 1,500 acres of parks and open spaces along an interconnected greenway around two major urban rivers.
The Necklace will connect residents to numerous recreational marvels including Whittier Narrows at the south, Peck Park at the north, and San Gabriel Confluence Park on the east. Peck Park is a redeveloped gravel quarry that provides 210 acres for fishing, bird watching, jogging, picnic areas and natural habitat. The Whittier Narrows Recreational Area to the south is a natural spectacle for the entire region. The San Gabriel River Discovery Center, planned to be built at this site, will educate hundreds of thousands of people annually about local watershed history. When complete, the Emerald Necklace will provide a regional network of trails and parks with connections that extend to the Angeles National Forest and the ocean.
Sixty years ago, the Río Hondo and San Gabriel River offered extensive areas to walk, jog, ride horses, play and swim. During the 1950’s and 60’s, they were placed in a concrete flood control channel and lost all valuable recreational space along their banks. Today, this area is one of the most densely populated regions in the state, where total park and open space is less than half an acre per 1,000 residents. The Emerald Necklace will reinvigorate these urban river corridors and return much of the original recreational space to the people that live within the surrounding cities.
