Photo of the Day: Chavez Ravine before Dodger Stadium

The site of Dodger Stadium looked very different prior to Walter O'Malley's arrival in town.

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Via Dodgers History comes this fetching image of Chavez Ravine in all of its pre-Dodger Stadium pastoral glory ... 

Contented sigh! I see woodland fauna! And milk maids! And Bilbo Baggins returning from his knight-errant's quest! 

Famously, this is what Peter O'Malley surveyed when he took his famous helicopter ride over Los Angeles in early 1957 ... 

(Image: AllPosters)

When O'Malley saw the rolling hills in tantalizing adjacency to the L.A. freeway system, he knew he wanted Chavez Ravine for himself, indigent woodland elves be damned. And thanks to some back-channel tactics and municipal kowtowing, he got just that.