Imagine working on the crew assigned to straighten Sunset Blvd (west of Silver Lake Blvd) in 1907 and as you dig into the hillside, you come across these boulders. What do you do? You stick them in a pile and figure out a plan later. I do hope someone did something creative with those huge balls, like arrange them into a rock garden, maybe? I’d guess they were quite heavy, so I expect that team of horses were involved somehow.
John J. says: “The rock came from Brush Canyon and was used to make the bed of the road.”
Sheri E says: “They are concretions. A concretion is a hard, compact mass formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between particles, and is found in sedimentary rock or soil. Concretions are often ovoid or spherical in shape, although irregular shapes also occur.”
And this is what the June 2022 view of Sunset Blvd looking west from Silver Lake Blvd looks like.
Every time I’ve driven this stretch of Sunset over the past 41 years, I’ve thought about the Herculean effort required to cut this passage through this hill. (My first thought upon seeing these large rock balls was that they must have been the leftover props from Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances.)
Someone on Twitter made a similar comment about “Seven Chances” so I think I’m going to have see if it’s on YouTube
I was thinking Keaton myself, having watched that scene on YT a few days back…