In the Fall of 2025, students from The Claremont Colleges participated in a field trip to the Glendale Narrows as part of their Pomona College class, 'Water in the West'. Afterwards, Max Pemberton, a student at Claremont McKenna College, was inspired to trawl the LA River X collection on Instagram and in the Western Water Archives and to craft this essay. Read on for an LA River X Remix by Max Pemberton.

LA River Trip Reflection

By Max Pemberton, as part of Water in the West, Fall 2025, Professor Char Miller

My “Water in the West” class, taught by Char Miller, went on a field trip to the Elysian Valley section of the LA River. This experience gave me a deeper understanding of the river I have resented my whole life. My section of the LA River in Long Beach is the most downstream, directly feeding into its delta into the San Pedro Bay. Two summers ago, I rode my bike 7 miles from the 405 Freeway to the river mouth almost every day. I was disappointed at the state it was in. The steep and wide concrete channel was the furthest thing from nature, and it never felt like a river to me. Every pass under a bridge reeked of urine. Dead fish occasionally floated downstream. The delta smelled of oil, a persistent reminder of past oil spills. And it didn’t occur to me when I was younger why my parents wouldn’t let me go down to the beach sometimes, especially after rain. I now understand– the river collects dirt, oil, chemicals, and grime from the streets of LA and dumps it into the beach that I spent my childhood at. In a way, I blame the LA River for dumping its gross contents into my stomping grounds. But, a small section of the river caught my eye every time I passed it and pulled me from my biker crouch to watch it go by– a green section past Willow Street that housed birds, fish, and life. And I feel that this small section planted a seed of hope in me. That this river might be redeemable. Our trip to the Elysian Valley section of the river watered this seed and opened my eyes to what comes before.

 I was surprised by what life we found. Crawfish and herons. Trees and grass. Compared to my past river experiences, this seemed like a foreign river. Why? This section of the river is not fully concretized. As Tilly Hinton explained on our trip, the Army Corps of Engineers could not concretize the bottom of the river because of how high the water table is. No matter how much concrete was poured, the river would not be buried. This has allowed flora to grow in the river’s bed, and subsequently houses fauna to thrive in. Signs of fishermen proved that this river could still sustain humans (recreationally, at least). The river here shows signs of what once was. Animals and plants living in equilibrium. Humans living commensally with the river’s offerings. Beyond the concrete sights and the freeway sounds is a surviving piece of what the river engineers had once “nailed the coffin on”– the river here is less like a corpse but rather an enduring symbol of life and water. Seeing life persist in this section had me reconsider what “alive” means in a city that has thoroughly engineered its environment. Even within a system built to suppress it, nature finds a way to push back. At the same time, this vitality is fragile. The herons and crawfish live within sight of storm drains and freeway overpasses. The water that sustains them still carries the residue of oil, metals, and chemicals washed from the streets above. Life here survives not dependent on human care, but in spite of human neglect. The duality between concrete and life embodies the paradox of the Los Angeles River. It is both an ecological scar and a sanctuary. The green stretches reveal the river’s resilience, but they also expose the city’s history of control against its own landscape.

 As I was walking through the cool water on slick concrete, I felt smooth stones under my feet. I almost forgot I was standing on concrete. I looked down and found erosion. At the edge of the waterline, there was a split. Although this was the same piece of concrete, one looked homogenous and the other showed large aggregate stones: erosion of the top layer of cement. I found this quite striking. It shows the persistence of the river, running endlessly since its concretization, slowly chipping away at the walls of its cell, sentenced by both the Army Corps of Engineers and Angelenos. It reveals the river’s quiet resistance– the way water continues to work against the structures meant to contain it. Concrete, a symbol of control, cannot hold against the slow patience of a current. And then, I saw something I have never seen before in this river. A switch in current. The concrete channel was built with flood control in mind, to optimize flow and push water downstream as efficiently as possible. But this organic rebellion proves that the river still remembers its shape. The river remembered that it wasn’t meant to flow straight. Rivers ebb and flow, turn and curve. The same water that once carved its valley now eats away its prison walls, hinting at the possibility of renewal. It’s easy to think of the Los Angeles River as a lost cause– too polluted, too engineered, or too urban. But the erosion I saw was proof of something else: that nature is never fully conquered. Beneath the concrete and the grime, the river still breathes. 

— Max Pemberton, December 17, 2025

You can see and share highlights from this remix on Instagram.

Char Miller wrote an article about taking his students to the Los Angeles River, which you can read here or in the Eden Magazine archives.