These fantastic sea creatures have played an important historic role in integrating the once newly-created Whittier Narrows Parks into the contested landscape. They attracted visitors and potential residents to the newly developed housing communities during the dawn of Southern California’s post war suburbanization. The creation of these parks transformed the area from an untamed floodplain that nestled numerous immigrant communities, to a network of cemented channels; curated parks with newly demarcated cities along its perimeter.

As the entire region was being re-imagined and reconstructed, Benjamin Dominguez’s sea creature sculptures invited visitors into a unique kind of oasis, one that for decades has provided thousands of people with respite from the urban environment, while infusing the landscape with magic. Their maker, Benjamin Dominguez, a trained artist from Mexico City, knew how to mold the materials that have shaped much of the modern environment’s hard surfaces into visions of fantasy.

Whittier Narrows

The Whittier Narrows Parks consist of a network of parks and recreational spaces that provides an oasis for San Gabriel Valley locals as well as visitors from throughout Greater Los Angeles. For many urban and suburban dwellers, it is the closest access they have to nature. Like many parks, Whittier Narrows and Legg Lake are constructed and highly curated spaces, whose original purpose is to control natural waterways and prepare the region for suburban growth.

There is no “Main Entrance” to the Whittier Narrows. The space is a public regional facility where visitors can enter from a variety of directions, depending on their point of origin — El Monte, Rosemead, La Puente — and their intended activity, such as sports, fishing, riding the equestrian trails, or a simple picnic.

The Whittier Narrows derives its name from the narrow gap where the Puente Hills and Montebello Hills come together, about seven miles east of the city of Los Angeles. It is in this Narrows that the Rio Hondo, San Gabriel River and Alhambra Wash converge. While the Federal Flood Control Act of 1936 provided the means to create a flood control area in the region, the flood of 1938 created the impetus to dam the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo Rivers. Despite an anti-dam movement based in the city of El Monte, [k1] then-Representative Richard Nixon was able to broker a compromise to keep the Narrows a place the public could still access.

In 1950, the Army Corps began construction of the Whittier Narrows with the caveat that the region would remain a recreational area. The lakes were intended as public fishing lakes, and were created as a joint project of the Department of Fish and Game, Wildlife Conservation Board, and the County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation. This unique partnership resulted in an overlapping of jurisdictions between local, county, state and federal agencies.

As part of the construction, Los Angeles County Supervisor Frank G. Bonelli looked for examples of play equipment that implemented new thinking in playground design, with the hopes that something unique would draw together the diverse communities surrounding the Narrows. [k3] . He became very interested in a new “fantasy-land” park in Las Vegas that was generating a considerable amount of media coverage. In the newspapers, he saw intriguing photographs of sculptures of a mother dragon surrounded by mushrooms, and two unique fish slides that were accessed through their open mouths and whose slide followed the curve of the fish’s body.

The sculptures, Bonelli learned, were the creations of Benjamin Dominguez. He was a seasoned artist with earlier works in Las Vegas and El Paso, Texas, as well as a fruitful career in Mexico City. Supervisor Bonelli saw in Dominguez and his playful cement creatures the perfect opportunity to make the Whittier Narrows Recreational Area a destination, and soon commissioned him to transform Legg Lake.