Thursday was our "cultural" trip and we drove into Los Angeles to visit the Farmers Market, eat at a wonderful deli, Canter's and finish up the day at the La Brea Tar Pits. The La Brea Tar Pits is an area where natural pools of water have formed and in addition, fissures in the bedrock have allowed oil seepage to the surface. The oil mixes with the sandy soil forming tar pits and animals wandering into the water to get a drink would get stuck in the tar and die. Wolves and other animals also got trapped trying to eat animals that were stuck in the tar. Eventually the tar would cover the animal and preserve the bones. The pits have killed many thousands of animals during the ice age and it is an active site today for paleontologists.
Early 20th century photo of the oil fields where the La Brea Tar Pits are located.
Map of site
Overlooking "lake pit" in the background
Museum grounds
Statues of Columbian Mammoths simulating a mammoth trapped in the tar in pit lake. Basically the tar was deep enough and sticky enough that when animals stepped into it they were unable to pull their feet out and escape.
Over much of pit lake one can see methane gas constantly bubbling to the surface of the pond.
In some places near the shore there is a thick oily/tar sludge on pit lake
Oily film covering the water in pit lake
The pits are fenced off for obvious reasons and as I was walking around pit lake I saw this area outside of the fenced area where oil/tar was oozing out of the ground. "….Then one day he was shootin at some food, and up through the ground came a bubblin' crude."
Methane gas bubbling to the surface in an area with thick heavy oil
In a few locations they have had to place metal barriers around locations where the oil is oozing out of the lawn.
Worker pruning an ornamental tree……An accident waiting to happen….
Excavated block of hardened asphalt filled with bones
The ground sloth stood about 4-6' tall
Bison
Mastadon
Saber Tooth Cat
Joe Camel's cousin
Mammath
400+ skulls of the Dire Wolf. More than two thousand have been found to date
American Lion
The "Fish Bowl" where paleontologists and many volunteers clean and identify bones
Pit 91 is an active pit where they scoop out tar and free bones from hardened asphalt. The pit is inactive during the winter months as the tar is too difficult to remove. These photos are looking down into the pit from a glass enclosed viewpoint area above.
And I will leave you with this photo of a van parked in the lot. We later saw the owner getting into the van and not surprisingly it belonged to a 64 or so year old pan-handling guitar player that was performing in the park for pocket money.
