In a hill on Altadena called Little Round Top, a grave remained for 136 years when the community underway flourished.
Here lie the remains of Owen Brown, son of the legendary abolitionist John Brown. Owen moved to Pasadena in the 1880s and was received by the locals as a hero to fight with his father in the wars of Kansas and Harper's Ferry Raid. His funeral in 1889 attracted thousands of mourners, and put him to rest near a cabin where he and a brother spent his last years.
The grave became a place of veneration, then into a controversy site in the early 2000s, when the owner of Little Round Top began to move the curious away. Demands were filed to boost public access. Brown's tombstone disappeared for a decade before being found hundreds of feet downhill.
His last resting place is now open to the public. A new owner gave a local group $ 300,000 to restore it in 2018, the Los Angeles County Supervisors Board designated it as a historic milestone in December, and the site is now under the care of the mountains of Santa Monica Conservancy.
The saga would be supposed to obtain its most prominent transmission until Wednesday at the Mountain View cemetery, where two of Owen's brothers are buried and where a plaque is inscribed with its name and image. Altadena's resident and filmmaker, Pablo Miralles, had been scheduled to debut a 20 -minute documentary about Owen's life.
Facebook is where I learned about projection. Facebook is also where I learned that Miralles and his family lost their home in the Eaton fire.
He and his son fled with important documents, photos and a painting that her grandmother took with her when she escaped from the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. Gone are the Miralles production notebook and the final payment checks for their crew. The documentary has already been saved online, although Miralles has no idea when it will stop.
“People need to find places to live – us I need to find a place to live, ”said Miralles last week at Stumtown Coffee in Pasadena. “I'm proud of my movie, but you can wait.”
Few were better qualified to make a documentary about Owen Brown than Miralles. His parents, immigrants from Argentina, moved from Eagle Rock to Altadena in the 1970s after finding a large enough house for them and their seven children. They ignored friends who said Altadena was “dangerous” and financed the purchase through a black property bank. His regular bank had refused “because they told my father that our house would be on a black street,” Miralles said.
Remember a bucolic education in a multi -regular paradise that informed the rest of his life and finally became his muse. The 60 -year -old created a well -received documentary about how his alma mater, John Muir in Pasadena, re -reached when white families enrolled their children in private schools and charter. Last year, Miralles wrote and directed a work that imagined a friendship between two of the most famous natives in the city of Las Rosas, Julia Child and Jackie Robinson. (I appeared in his 2012 documentary about the intense football rivalry between the United States and Mexico).
“I didn't know that I would cover Pasadena like me,” he said, “but when you acknowledge that you came from a place with a struggle, you have to do it.”
Pablo Miralles, a documentary filmmaker who lost his home in Eaton's fire, walks to Owen Brown's tomb, son of abolitionist John Brown. Miralles is completing an Owen documentary and how it ended in the Pasadena area.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Altadena's charm attracted Miralles as a resident in 2019. By then, she had made a four -minute short for Owen Brown Gravesite Committee on her cause.
“You learn about [John Brown] At school, which is a maniac and a crazy intention to kill the owners of white slaves, “said Miralles, who had climbed into Owen's grave, but otherwise he didn't know much about him at that time.” But when You read his documents, he was not that at all. “
Miralles's short film impressed the president of the Michele Zack Committee. He asked Miralles to make a longer movie than the Unified School District of Pasadena could show in the classrooms.
Owen joined his father in the armed conflicts that made John Brown such a divisive figure in the history of the United States. In Kansas, Owen killed a man in a skirmish between the abolitionists and the pro-skill settlers. He stayed to protect the weapons and horses, while his father directed the raid in the Harper Ferry in 1859, which resulted in the death of two of Owen's brothers and in the capture and execution of John.
“The 1850s resonates so strongly with what is happening at this time,” said Zack, who also lost his home in the Fire Eaton. “Do you think we are divided now? We divide even more in the 1850s. Owen Brown is symbolic of all that, and here is this story in our backyard. “
She still wants to project Brown's documentary to the public, but not in the short term.
“There are so much suffering, loss and pain at this time, and that will continue for years, but we are not going to postpone [the film] For years, ”said Zack.
Miralles and his team were busy giving the final touches in the project. In fact, the sound engineer was working on the day when Eaton's fire forced him to evacuate (his house remains standing).
“The idea that the original radical abolitionists have their literal roots here, the man is still there, his bones are there, it is so important,” Miralles said. “We need to live up to the ideals of this nation as Owen, which means that the locals will fight to maintain diversity here.”
He looked at his phone's home screen to check the time. He presented a photo of him, his wife, his son and his two dogs in his house in early January.
We got into his SUV and headed to Altadena. The plan was to visit his incinerated house, then see if Brown's tomb came out unharmed. Neither Zack knew his destiny.
Miralles led to its old school, Franklin Elementary – destroyed. A fireplace was all that was left of the house where his brother lived. “There are many of my friends here,” Miralles said with a sigh when his head threw himself aside. “Only blocks, blocks and blocks”.
He decided not to stop at home “because I don't want to put a danger suit again.” Instead, we pass through the control point after the control point: “Military vehicles on my hood. It is a little crazy ”, before climbing a sinuous street that ended near Brown's tomb.
The signals around the world warned people who proceed at their own risk. Another proclaimed: “The looters will be triggered.” Others said the danger of fire was “extreme.”
The paved street became a single lane road that leads to the National Los Angeles forest. Miralles parked near an abandoned car has been in the place for a long time “where the Owen cabin used to be.” A worker at the California conservation body soon approached us to ask ourselves what we were doing there.
Miralles explained the purpose of our visit. The worker nodded.
“I wondered why there was a path there,” he said, greeting the small round upper before returning to clear more brush.
The first part of the path is narrow, with a strong fall that forced me to look forward instead of writing in my notebook. The vibrant cassava, oak and sage stopped next to Chaparral Dry. On the way there were interpretive signs that told the stories of two pioneers of the black angels: Biddy Mason, a previously enslaved woman who became a rich owner of the property in the center of the city, and Robert Owens, a successful man of Business and Mason relative for marriage that used to collect Wood Wood in the hills we were walking.
Finally we arrive at the base of Little Round Top, named for a famous battle of the Civil War, and we look at a devastated altadena of blackened trees and level properties.
I asked Miralles what he saw.
“It's not what I see,” he replied. “It's what I No see.”
From there, we uploaded a short but steep change that ended on a land plateau. The pines offered shadow for two banks. Before us it was Brown's tomb.
After a short uphill walk, Miralles sees Owen Brown's tomb, son of abolitionist John Brown.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The stones described where their body lies. Someone had drawn a heart on earth. At the head of the grave there was a tombstone that lists Brown's name, his years of life and the legend “son of John Brown The Liberator.”
There were no signs of fire damage. Miralles seemed relieved.
“There used to be much more vegetation here, but everything is clear,” he said as we looked at Altadena again. To our right in the distance was the Cañada Flintridge. A pink fire retardant streak dirty the valley below.
“I hope people recognize the importance of this grave and what Owen and his family represented for this country,” he said while looking at Brown's tombstone. Then he looked at his Altadena again. A dust plier now rose from a neighborhood.
“I used to walk these hills as it grew. There would be fires every three or four years, he said. “But I never thought that what happened to us would once happen.”
