Bixby Slough

Bixby Slough (American English pronunciation: “slew/slu”) was an ancient wetland in Los Angeles County, California.

Sometimes called Machado Lake, the slough was a “large freshwater wetland in the Carson-Harbor City- Wilmington area” that flowed into San Pedro Bay about three or four miles (5 km) west of Dominguez Slough.I-110 Freeway Transit Construction, Harbor Freeway Corridor, San Pedro to the Convention Center, Los Angeles: Environmental Impact Statement. (1985). United States, p. 7. Originally a “network of sloughs, nondescript streams and bogs in the harbor district,” over time the Port of Los Angeles was carved “out of the mud flats and shallow waters that edged the ranchos of San Pedro and Palos Verdes.” About 90 percent of wetland ecosystems in Los Angeles County have been destroyed, with the losses in the highly urbanized South Bay “especially acute” and one biologist calling the draining of Bixby Slough and other harbor-area wetlands a “wipeout.”

History

In pre-Columbian times, the Slough was host to Suanga and Massunga, two villages of the indigenous Tongva people.“Weekender: South Bay's biggest nature preserve prepares for Easter picnickers,” Los Angeles Times, 1989-03-24, page I9. In “ Spanish days” the area was known as Cañada de Palos Verdes (“glen of the green sticks”). The major body of water in the wetland was called Lagunita (“little lake”) for a time in the late 19th century, as well as Machado Lake in the early 20th century. The common name ''Bixby Slough'' came from land owner Jotham Bixby of Rancho Cerritos, who acquired “an undivided fifth” of Rancho Los Palos Verdes in 1872. “For many years he wetlandwas the only source of a fresh water supply for the stock maintained on the ranch”.

From the turn of the century until at least the 1920s, there were notions of connecting the Slough to the west basin of the harbor (now called the Port of Los Angeles) by dredging (“From Bixby Slough to the head of the inner slough at Wilmington is hardly more than a mile…Bixby Slough is about a mile and a half long and half a mile wide in places.”), but the plans were never enacted.

In 1937, Bixby Slough was described as a “ sink at the back of Los Angeles Harbor…in rainy seasons, such as last winter’s, the slough becomes an extensive lake, sometimes thirty-five to forty-five foot 0.6-13.7 mdeep in places…the slough has no outlet so that when any great quantity of water is deposited there during the wet season, it remains throughout the following summer.”“Mud Mine Helps Develop Great Southland Industry: Bixby Slough Area Back of Harbor Produces Valuable Commodity,” ''Los Angeles Times'', 1937-05-16, page E4.

Later that year the slough was described as both a “flood menace” and a “health menace” and County Supervisors were urged to drain it in order to open the land for industrial purposes.

Beginning in 1947, the area had lifeguard on duty “in order to cope with the drownings of youths riding improvised rafts.”

In 1951, the Los Angeles City Council began to consider the future of the “mud-encrusted banks of the crescent-shaped body of water” that was the Slough, “where several boys have been drowned recently.”

In 1953, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors allocated funding for a “storm drain to carry the stagnant slough waters to the ocean…Over the last several years the water trap has claimed the lives of many children too young to realize its dangers.”

“The drain, when completed, will control water levels in the swamp-like slough…”. The area surrounding the lake was “condemned” in 1955 in anticipation of creating a recreation area and the wetland was “finally brought under control” later that year with the completion of a storm drain, running underground from Anaheim and I Streets until it emptied the slough into the west basin of Los Angeles Harbor.

Funding for what is now Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park was allocated in 1957.
Bastajian, Lee, “Harbor Park Lake: Former Slough Now Small Boat Mecca,” ''Los Angeles Times'', 1965-01-17, p. cs1. The 285-acre recreation area has a body of water called Harbor Lake or Machado Lake.

Ecology

The Slough was a “palustrine persistent emergent wetland and lake.” Both Bixby Slough and nearby Dominguez Slough wetlands seasonally expanded, even overlapping at the margins, and turned into salt marshes closer to the ocean.

”Shallow freshwater marsh located between the towns of Wilmington and Lomita…the water surface ay be onlyfew acres during a series of dry years” but contains catfish, according to the California Fish and Game report of 1939.

“The slimy, sucking and treacherous character of the soil beneath the water” was assigned blame for dangerous conditions in the Slough. In the 1920s, the Bixby Slough was a “mud mine” for nearby oil drilling operations with “an incalculable amount of material…the origin of the mud has not been determined. It is different than the earth of the surrounding territory. When dried it is exceedingly hard and takes on a very high polish similar to that of marble. When liquefied it remains in that condition for hours, is very elastic and adhesive. It has already been explored to a depth of forty feet 2 mwithout any change of quality.”

What is now the lake at the recreation area “extended northeast over a wider area and was surrounded by willows, bulrushes, milk thistles and other grasslike vegetation.”

The Harbor Park and recently constructed Bixby Marshland are recent mitigation attempts to restore some of the ecosystem services lost to the destruction of the Bixby Slough.

See also

* Wetland conservation
* Wilmington Oil Field
* Bixby Marshland
* Ballona Wetlands
* Los Cerritos Wetlands
* Madrona Marsh
* Gardena Willows Wetland
* Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge
* Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge

References

{{coord missing, Los Angeles County, California

Wetlands and marshes of Los Angeles County, California
History of Los Angeles County, California
Los Angeles Harbor Region