Dodger Stadium opened in 1962 on land cleared by one of the most controversial acts of urban renewal in Los Angeles history, the hills of Chavez Ravine where Mexican American families once lived. Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, the year after the Brooklyn Dodgers moved west in 1958, and its location in Chavez Ravine was only available because the city had spent a decade displacing the Mexican American communities that had lived in these hills — communities of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop — promising to build public housing that was never built. When the city gave the land to the Dodgers instead, the last families who had refused to leave were forcibly evicted in 1959.
Photographs of the evictions, of sheriff's deputies carrying an elderly woman from her home while crowds watched, appeared in newspapers across the country. The stadium itself is a masterpiece of mid-century design: its asymmetrical tiers, its views of the San Gabriel Mountains beyond the outfield, and its Dodger Dogs have made it one of the most visited stadiums in baseball for sixty years. The Dodgers have won seven World Series championships.
Notice the San Gabriel Mountains rising beyond center field from the reserve level.