One of my favorite field trips as a child was the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles.  It was an annual affair it seemed and every time I was jut fascinated with this museum.  But, as with many things in Los Angeles, I had not returned in years…decades.  This week after nearly 30 years I returned to the Natural History Museum and again was in awe of the collection which some of it was new and digitalized while others exhibits appeared untouched by time.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is a crown jewel of Los Angeles' museums. A national leader in exhibitions, education and research, the Museum was L.A.'s first cultural institution to open its doors to the public in 1913. It is the largest natural and historical museum in the Western United States, safe guarding more than 35 million spectacular, diverse specimens and artifacts.

Three floors of permanent exhibits enthrall the entire family with minds-on exploration. The towering "Dueling Dinosaurs," complete skeletons of a Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops in battle, greet visitors in the majestic Grand Foyer. In addition to special exhibitions, the Museum boasts magnificent permanent halls that feature grand dioramas of African and American mammals, rare dinosaurs and fossils, marine animals, Pre-Columbian culture, and historical artifacts from California and Southwest history, as well as early Hollywood memorabilia. The exquisite Gem & Mineral Hall features the largest collection of gold in the United States. The kid-friendly Ralph M. Parsons Discovery Center and Insect Zoo, located on the ground floor, provides interactive family learning with “handle-able” specimens such as shells and fossils; terrariums filled with insects, reptiles and amphibians; and Gallery Interpreters who answer questions and offer daily animal presentations. In the Paleo Dig Pit, kids learn can about excavation by digging for dinosaur bones.

The Museum is also an active research center. The Research & Collections Department spans the areas of living and fossil invertebrates (echinoderms, crustacea, worms, entomology, and mollusks), vertebrates (birds, mammals, reptiles, fishes), mineralogy, anthropology (Native American, Pre-Columbian and Pacific) and history (California and Southwestern).

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in Exposition Park 1913 as the Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and colonnaded rotunda, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Additional wings opened in 1925, 1930, 1960, and 1976.

The museum was divided in 1961 into the Los Angeles County Museum of History and Science and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). LACMA moved to new quarters on Wilshire Boulevard in 1965, and the Museum of History and Science was renamed the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Eventually, the museum renamed itself again, becoming the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

The museum is the largest in the western United States, and its collections include nearly 33 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history.

The museum has three floors of permanent exhibits. Among the most popular museum displays are those devoted to animal habitats, dinosaurs, pre-Columbian cultures, and the Ralph M. Parsons Discovery Center and Insect Zoo.

The museum has two satellites, the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits and the William S. Hart Ranch and Museum in Newhall, California.

The museum's collections are strong in many fields, but the mineralogy and Pleistocene paleontology are the most esteemed, the latter thanks to the wealth of specimens collected from the famed La Brea Tar Pits.

Over the years, the museum has built additions onto its original building. The domed rotunda features a bronze sculpture of the three Muses holding up the world, representing the three subject areas to which the museum was dedicated in 1913. This hall is among the most distinctive locales in Los Angeles and has often been used as a filming location.

After touring around the museum bringin back childhood memories and battling the throngs of children on field trips, my tour was over and I went to the Exposition Park Rose Garden adjacent to the museum.
The Exposition Park Rose Garden is a historic 7-acre (28,000 m2) sunken garden located in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, California.

From 1871 to 1911, the site of the rose garden was part of the city's Agricultural Park. The rose garden area was then used for horse, camel, dog, and later automobile racing; it also reportedly housed the city's longest bar and "one of its most stylish brothels." In 1914, the city announced plans to construct a wildflower garden at the park, but the rose garden was not built in 1927 with the planting of 15,000 bushes of more than 100 varieties.  When the garden was announced, the Los Angeles Times applauded the project: "No more fitting tribute could be paid to the spirit of Southern California than to erect in the center of her largest city the greatest rose garden in the world." During the Great Depression, the lack of funding threatened the closure of the rose garden, then described as "the largest rose garden in the world."

In 1936, four large marble statues by Danish sculptor Thyra Boldsen were installed on pedestals at the four corners of the garden. The statues were titled "Nymph Finding Pipes of Pan," "The Blessing" (dedicated to the mothers of the world), "The Start" (awarded first prize by the Danish Academy of Fine Arts), and "Terpsichore" (or "Melody of Life"). The sculptor explained her intent with the statues this way: "In conceiving and executing these four figures dedicated to womanhood and motherhood, I have had in mind that men for centuries have erected statues symbolizing bravery—these symbolize love, life and joy."

In the 1950s, the annual pruning demonstration drew thousands of rose enthusiasts to the park.  By the mid-1980s, the garden had more than 20,000 rose bushes and more than 200 varieties of roses. The All-America Rose Selection, a rose growers organization, began donating its Rose of the Year to the garden in 1940.  The garden is reportedly visited by more than a million people a year and is a popular location for weddings, reflection, and other events.  The garden also has four gazebos, several statues, and a central fountain.
In 1986, plans to dig up the garden to build an underground parking garage led to protests in the media. The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial opposing the plan: "There are times when the leaders of Los Angeles seem perversely intent on living up to the image that many outsiders have of them—insensitive and uncouth rabbits who would, say, dig up a garden to put in a parking lot." The garden had also been threatened by an earlier proposal by the Los Angeles Raiders football team to convert the garden into a practice field for the team. In order to protect the garden from such threats, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.