Here’s a terrific icon-in-the-making image: the Hollywoodland sign under construction. I would have thought they’d have built each letter before moving onto the next. But the “L” and the “A” look like they’re only partially constructed, so maybe they left the two letters closest to the tractor path until last. The sign was illuminated for first time on Saturday December 8, 1923, so I’m guessing this photo was probably taken in the late summer.
A tractor in front of the Hollywoodland sign still under construction, Los Angeles, 1923
Tractor driver is Fearless being so close to the edge.
cool photo.
Multi-tasking, 1923 style!!
My understanding was that the mule teams dragged the materials up there for the construction. Tractors may have built the lower roads in the housing project and improved the trail up toward the sign, but it does not look like they went beyond this point as that’s a very sharp incline ahead. But how did they manage to dig down to sink the poles…two shovels, a milk bucket and a length of rope on a tripod? Forget it Jake, it’s Hollywood.
One of our pastimes when I was growing up in Hollywood in the 40’s to 60’s
was climbing up the the Hollywood sign from Ferndale Park via our “secret trail”.