Almost as soon as there were cars, there was traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Matt Roth, historian for the Automobile Club of Southern California, says there was an elaborate plan to ease congestion west of MacArthur Park.

"In the early 1920s, a group of civic leaders, including Harry Chandler of the L.A. Times, William O'Melveny of the law firm O'Melveny and Myers, they wanted to rebuild Wilshire Boulevard into this eight- or nine-lane parkway, as they called it, that would go from the Park to the sea."

The Wilshire Parkway would have commemorative fountains and lavish landscaping. But property owners wanted Wilshire to be a fancy shopping street and they wanted the street extended through MacArthur Park all the way to downtown L.A. The battle ended up, as most political battles in California do, on the ballot. The property owners won, and traffic pokes along Wilshire Boulevard to this day.

(Airdate for this story: 12/15/07)