These days, Sunset Blvd is one of the longest, most crowded, and most famous thoroughfares in Los Angeles, so it’s quite a contrast to see this photo from 1900, when Sunset Blvd was an empty, unpaved street lined with pepper trees as far as we can see. Those branches are thick with leaves and look as though they would have provided a good amount of shade from the California sun.
Roughly the same view in February 2021. Quite a contrast, isn’t it?
Given that early automobiles were still largely confined to the rapidly improved roads of urban Los Angeles, it seems unclear as to why Sunset would appear so wide before the era of studios in Hollywood. Even when it was first electrified with a single rail line, Santa Monica (Boulevard) had the appearance of a trace road accross the Cahuenga Valley. Apparently the original steam dummy narrow-gauge line of the Cahuenga Valley Railroad Company was re-routed up to Sunset where it headed toward Wilcox (on USGS maps labeled then as the Hollywood & Cahuenga Valley R.R.–not an established fact in the corporate history). Perhaps this may have given the impetus to widen the roadway. Even Prospect (Hollywood Blvd.) had yet to spread wider at the turn of the century. That would soon change rapidly.