Elysian Park, the oldest and second-largest park in Los Angeles, covers the hills above Silver Lake and Echo Park that the city set aside as public land in 1886, when it was barely a decade old. Elysian Park covers 600 acres of chaparral, oak woodland, and open grassland on the hills above the Los Angeles River, largely wild compared to the manicured parks of the flatlands. The park contains the Los Angeles Police Academy, established here in 1925, where the city's officers have been trained for a century, as well as the Academy Café which is open to the public and offers some of the best institutional cooking in the city.
The park also contains Angels Knoll, the hillside above Angelino Heights where the soap opera scenes were filmed in 500 Days of Summer. Look north from the high points of the park toward Dodger Stadium in the ravine below, and south toward downtown. On spring evenings the park fills with picnickers and dog-walkers and families from the surrounding neighborhoods, using the hills the way city dwellers use wilderness: as a reminder that the city has edges.