Dominguez Slough

Dominguez Slough was used as a hunting and fishing ground by the indigenous Tongva-Kizh people; at one point skeletons and relics were found nearby. According to one mid-20th-century account, the lake was "shown as {{lang|en|Agua Negra}} on early maps and believed to have earned that title because of early negro squatters nearby and the fact that a negro kept an inn on the old Los Angeles to Wilmington and San Pedro road which crossed the slough."{{Cite web |title=Propose Dominguez Lake Name for Nigger Slough |newspaper=San Pedro News Pilot |volume=11 |issue=23 |page=7 |department=Harbor District News |date=1938-04-04 |via=California Digital Newspaper Collection |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SPNP19380404.2.138 |access-date=2024-05-19 }} Research into the historical ecology of the watershed has found that between the 1890s and the 1920s, "large Dominguez Slough converted in a mere 30 years to being mostly open water to mostly wetland or sump or wet meadow."{{Cite web |last=Hall |first=Jessica |date=2009-10-03 |title=Preliminary maps of the Dominguez Watershed |url=https://lacreekfreak.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/preliminary-maps-of-the-dominguez-watershed/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=L.A. Creek Freak |language=en}} The wildlife value of the wetland was recognized by a newspaper editorial writer of 1894, who stated:{{Cite news |date=1894-12-22 |title=Nigger Slough Is Doomed: Historic Hunting Ground Is Nuisance |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/los-angeles-herald-nigger-slough-is-doom/147665319/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=Los Angeles Herald |pages=7}}

{{blockquote|text=From the earliest settlement of this county Nigger slough has been famous as the best duck hunting ground in the southern country. Sportsmen from all over the southern counties have spent many happy days and nights along the margin of the slough in pursuit of canvasbacks, mallard, cinnamon, teal, widgeon, spike tails, spoon bills, and other varieties of the broad-billed and web-footed tribes. In the old days the ground was open to all, but in later years the plebeian sportsman has had to content himself with a chance shot at the stray duck who wandered off the gilt-edged grounds which are now leased by the Los Angeles Gun Club, who enforce the game law and convict poachers with all the severity practised by the autocratic earls, lords and dukes of "Merrie" England, who guard their hunting grounds with rule of czars.}}

According to an 1895 report in the Los Angeles Times, the slough then covered about {{Convert|1500|acre|ha}} and may have been spring-fed as, "In winter the water would be renewed and in summer it would be reduced by evaporation, although a constant inflow of what is estimated to be 60 miner's inches, coming up through the bottom, has kept the quantity of water up to a certain point."{{Cite news |date=1895-08-02 |title=A Foul Mess |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-a-foul-mess/147663260/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The Los Angeles Times |pages=7}} In 1903 a county survey stated that the soil at Dominguez Slough was "somewhat unique in its formation, the material having been carried into the lake by the streams, chiefly by Los Angeles River, and there deposited. It may therefore be considered a lacustrine deposit."{{Cite book |title=Soil survey of the Los Angeles area, California |first=Louis |last=Mesmer |author-link=Louis Mesmer |publisher=U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Soils |url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4269756?urlappend=%3Bseq=34 |access-date=2024-05-19 |via=HathiTrust |page=28 | hdl=2027/uc1.b4269756?urlappend=%3Bseq=34 |language=en}} Ornithologists who visited in 1914 described the slough as about {{Convert|7.5|mi}} long and generally about {{Convert|.5|mi}} wide with a total of about {{convert|1,800| acres}} of land under cover of water, writing "South Nigger Slough is much larger than north slough. Los Angeles boulevard divides both lakes. South slough is about four miles long, extending from the Los Angeles boulevard to Wilmington and the north slough lies two miles south-southeast of Gardena. There are several small marshes adjoining Nigger Slough proper."{{Cite news |last=Cookman |first=Alfred |date=1914-07-14 |title=A Day at "Nigger Sloughs" |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-long-beach-telegram-and-the-long-bea/147665529/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The Long Beach Telegram and The Long Beach Daily News |pages=2}} They observed least bitterns, white-faced ibis, russet-backed thrush, black-headed grosbeak, Pacific yellowthroat, song sparrows, marbled godwit, mockingbirds, burrowing owls, turkey vultures,{{Cite news |last=Cookman |first=Alfred |date=1914-06-09 |title=Bird Life |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/press-telegram-bird-life/147666147/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=Press-Telegram |pages=2}} snakes, snapping turtles, coots, black-necked stilts, killdeer, yellow-headed blackbirds, ruddy ducks, cinnamon teal, pied-billed grebes, redwing blackbirds, plover, and purple gallinules.

File:Marsh Wren - (Cistothorus palustris) - Flickr - Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith.jpgs (Cistothorus palustris ssp. paludicola); tule wrens are a dark-colored subspecies of marsh wren, a bird that "unlike many other marsh-haunters...is not attracted by marshes of small size. A swampy pool a few yards across attracts the Red-wing and perhaps a Rail or two, but the Long-billed Marsh Wren demands a considerable area."{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=111LAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22tule+wren%22&pg=PA338 |title=Biological Series |date=1926 |pages=338 |language=en}}]]

A 1916 account stated that the waterline of Nigger Slough was roughly {{Convert|14|ft|abbr=on}} above sea level.{{Cite news |last=Reagan |first=J. W. |date=1916-03-24 |title=Offers Plans for Drainage |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-offers-plans-for-d/147664724/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The Los Angeles Times |pages=19}} The report also described three 19th-century dikes that had been constructed by the rancheros to exclude Los Angeles River floodwaters from the slough. The ecology of the slough apparently began changing around this time, as a bird journal reported in 1918: "The passing of famed Nigger Slough as a result of drainage work begun in 1916, removes the last considerable area of breeding-ground for fresh-water birds in southern California. The reduction of formerly extensive deep-water areas to wide stretches of oozy mud, partly covered by a thin sheet of water, appears to have coincided with an unusual visitation of red phalarope to this locality."{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BOnITg5tEkkC&dq=%22Nigger+Slough%22+rules&pg=PA192 |title=The Condor |date=1918 |publisher=Cooper Ornithological Society. |pages=192 |language=en}}

A man who lived near the slough when he was a kid in the 1920s described to the New York Times in 1964 how "the boys got through it on foot or on rafts made of boards or in pole boats. It abounded in foxes, swamp rats, skunks, owls, herons, egrets and thousands of red‐wing blackbirds. Ken Stager, now chief curator of the ornithological division in the Los Angeles County Museum, did his first bird‐watching in that swamp. To add to its fascination, Mr. Litton recalls that sheriffs were forever tracking down criminals who were reputed to be in hiding there."{{Cite news |last=Atkinson |first=Brooks |date=1964-02-11 |title=The Urban Sprawl of Los Angeles Engulfs Swamp That Had a Touch of Tom Sawyer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/11/archives/the-urban-sprawl-of-los-angeles-engulfs-swamp-that-had-a-touch-of.html |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} The slough was indeed considered more or less impassable to law enforcement in the 1920s as it remained a "dense entanglement of tules, high grass, and willow brush...for years has been a refuge for men hunted by officers".{{Cite news |date=1923-10-04 |title=Report of Williams' Escape in Southland |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/visalia-daily-times-report-of-williams/147666310/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=Visalia Daily Times |pages=3}}

The name change was proposed in 1938 as part of a plan to turn the area into a bird sanctuary. By 1940, the Laguna Dominguez watershed was said to be bounded by Normandie Avenue, Avalon Boulevard, 182nd street, and Carson Street.{{Cite news |date=1940-06-14 |title=Nigger Slough Dam Proposed |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-pomona-progress-bulletin-nigger-slou/147663520/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The Pomona Progress Bulletin |pages=5}} The construction of the long-planned drain took place between 1949 and 1967 and cost $26.4 million. After the slough was drained, the {{Convert|18.2|mi|abbr=on|adj=on}} infrastructure became known as Laguna Dominguez Channel{{Cite news |last=Drooz |first=Alan |date=1981-08-30 |title=Bicycle Trail Along Channel Proposed |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-bicycle-trail-alon/147663796/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The Los Angeles Times |pages=496}} or simply Dominguez Channel, a chute to the sea bordered by "oil refineries, industrial sites, and tract housing."{{Cite news |last=Jones |first=Grahame |date=1973-12-30 |title=Channel Was Designed for Storms—Not Beauty |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-channel-was-design/147663920/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |work=The Los Angeles Times |pages=100}} Dominguez Slough survives in fragmentary form in the Gardena Willows Wetlands Preserve, Madrona Marsh, "'Devil's Dip' at Chester Washington Golf Course...a wetland inside a mobile home park [Carson Harbor Village]...Victoria Regional Park/Golf Course in Carson [was] also part of it."{{Cite web |last=Hall |first=Jessica |date=2021-11-05 |title=About that Dominguez Stench |url=https://lacreekfreak.wordpress.com/2021/11/05/about-that-dominguez-stench/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=L.A. Creek Freak |language=en}} Devil's Dip is part of Anderson Wash, considered a tributary of Dominguez Slough. Another section of Anderson Wash still existed in 2009 as a somewhat undisturbed "sliver of coastal sage scrub and riparian vegetation along the south side of the 105 Fwy., just west of Normandie Ave. It includes a railroad right-of-way and is located on a steep slope with established houses above, so is arguably relatively secure."{{cite web |last=Cooper |first=Daniel |year=2009 |title=Wildlife Survey of the Stanford-Avalon Community Garden, Watts, Los Angeles, California |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354555176}}

{{gallery |mode=packed |title=Dominguez Slough & Laguna Dominguez Channel

|File:Diseño de Rancho San Pedro Los Angeles California Dominguez 1843.jpg|1843 {{lang|es|diseño}} showing bodies of water in the area

|File:CLAREMONT Rancho San Pedro survey map 1857.jpg|1857 survey mentions freshwater lakes near the Rancho San Pedro–Rancho Palos Verdes border

|File:Compton Creek and Dominguez Slough on old Rancho San Pedro lands near San Gabriel River.jpg|Compton Creek and Dominguez Slough on old Rancho San Pedro lands near San Gabriel River

|File:Lagunas Dominguez 1888.jpg|{{lang|es|Las lagunas Dominguez}} (Dominguez lakes), 1888

|File:1890 Redondo Quadrangle.jpg|The 1890 USGS Redondo Quadrangle map shows five of Southern California's 19th-century wetlands: Dominguez Slough, Bixby Slough, Ballona, the Old Salt Lake at Redondo, and Wilmington Lagoon

|File:Plate 7 Development of underground waters in the western coastal plain region of southern California Water Supply Paper 139 By Walter Curran Mendenhall.jpg|Plate 7 from Development of underground waters in the western coastal plain region of southern California (1905)

|File:"Bird Harvest Before Gun" The Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1903.jpg|Los Angeles Times, 1903

|File:"Harbor_Plan"_The_Los_Angeles_Times,_August_11,_1907.jpg|Schematic of plan to build a ship canal between Dominguez Slough and Bixby Slough to create a harbor (Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1907)

|File:The Los Angeles Times 1914 10 11 page 95.jpg|Los Angeles Times, 1914

|File:San Pedro Harbor Boulevard - June 1919.jpg|Paving "San Pedro Harbor Boulevard" through the slough, June 1919

|File:Dominguez Channel Plan.jpg|"Dominguez Channel Plan" (Gardena Valley News and Gardena Tribune, March 8, 1956)

|File:Watersheds of Los Angeles County, California.jpg|Dominguez Channel is one of the major watersheds of L.A. County

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• Use of nigger in proper names
• Redondo Beach via Gardena Line
• San Pedro via Gardena Line
• Magic Johnson Park
• Moneta, California
• West Athens, California
• Willowbrook, California
• Dominguez Oil Field

{{reflist}}

• {{Cite web |last=Kadinsky |first=Sergey |date=2021-08-25 |title=Dominguez Channel, Los Angeles |url=https://hiddenwatersblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/25/dominguez-channel-los-angeles/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=Hidden Waters blog |language=en}}

{{Coord|33.8743|-118.2925|display=title}}

Category:Carson, California

Category:Gardena, California

Category:History of Los Angeles County, California

Category:South Bay, Los Angeles

Category:Wetlands and marshes of Los Angeles County, California