Dedicated:
December 14, 1952
Visualized by:
Charley Atkins
Built By:
City of Los Angeles,
Department of Recreation and Parks
Travel Town was born in 1952. The museum was the handiwork of Recreation and Parks employee Charley Atkins. A maintenance employee by day, he was interested in trains and counted some prominent railroad historians as his friends, including Gerald Best, Ira Swett, and Ward Kimball. Charley began simply by soliciting steam-era railroad equipment and other transportation relics for display in Griffith Park. He wrote letters, he made phone calls, and he met folks in person to plead his case… that children needed to see and touch the transportation equipment of yesteryear to appreciate their lives today.
Charley finally hit pay dirt in 1952. First the Southern Pacific Lines agreed to donate a locomotive, followed by other railroads with a depot building, a streetcar, and finally for 1952, the Union Pacific donated a caboose. Several wagons also arrived at this convenient flat area of Griffith Park which had been a series of camps over the previous thirty years.
Steam locomotives, railroad cars, wagons, trucks, trolleys, buses, cars, even boats and planes – antique transportation equipment arrived steadily at Travel Town for the next decade. Although many pieces of transportation history were donated, the primary emphasis of the growing collection was railroading. Among the special features of Travel Town from the earliest days was a live steam locomotive railroad operation, which ran from 1956 to 1961, and the tradition of a Travel Town birthday party which began in the Union Pacific dining car No. 3669 in 1955.
Consider making a donation to help our museum volunteers restore the trains and improve your Travel Town experience!
Steam locomotives, railroad cars, wagons, trucks, trolleys, buses, cars, even boats and planes – antique transportation equipment arrived steadily at Travel Town for the next decade. Although many pieces of transportation history were donated, the primary emphasis of the growing collection was railroading. Among the special features of Travel Town from the earliest days was a live steam locomotive railroad operation, which ran from 1956 to 1961, and the tradition of a Travel Town birthday party which began in the Union Pacific dining car No. 3669 in 1955.
Travel Town is older than the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore (1953) and the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay (1956) and just about every other railroad-related museum in the U.S. except the Seashore Trolley Museum (1941).