Wildcatters Dog Park history

The City of Brea was incorporated in 1917, and at that time the Brea Fire Department was born.

During those beginning years, Brea's only fire truck was a 1923 Seagrave.

This was Brea's first fire truck and was purchased for $16,000 in 1923. It was known as "Old Susie" by the volunteers. "Old Susie" was put to the test in 1926 when lightening struck in the Union Oil fields and started an oil fire.

During the 1930's, Judge Charles Kinsler was named as Brea's first fully paid and first full-time Fire Chief.

In 1938 the Brea Fire Department, which was slowly increasing its paid personnel, promoted A.G. Ellis as its Fire Chief.

After receiving votes from 1947, Brea Mayor Emil Carlson (along with some Chamber and City Council members) meets with Metropolitan Water District officials to celebrate Brea’s water lines being supplied by the Colorado River.

When Chief Ellis retired in 1964, Kenneth Staggs was hired from the Covina Fire Department and began a 15-year reign of the department.

Fire Station 2 at 125 S. Laurel Ave. was opened in 1977 as a temporary structure.

In 1978, the citizens of Brea voted for and received paramedic service for the first time.

In 1979, a group of residents led by Martha Scott Benedict and Doris Richards established what has come to be known as the first park for dogs at the site.

The Ohlone Dog Park, later renamed the Martha Scott Benedict Dog Park, would not be officially sanctioned by the city of Berkeley until 1983.

In 1984, Division Chief Francesconi retired and Jerry McDowell was appointed Fire Chief.

On April 11, 1985, Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs proposed building dog runs in L.A. city parks, making the city the first in Southern California to consider the idea.

During his time as Fire Chief, Fire Station 3 was completed and dedicated in 1986.

Though dog owners continued to use the site as a dog park, it took until April 15, 1988, for the Council, on an 11-0 vote, to make the establishment of the first dog park in Los Angeles official.

Fender Musical Instruments opens a plant in Brea and operates from it until 1991

Chief Moody successfully pursued the acquisition of the city's first ladder truck which was put into service on October 19, 1992.

Dog owners overcame City Council opposition in 1993, and won approval for a dog park at Dominguez Park, on Flagler Lane between Beryl and Anita streets.

The bare-bones site was upgraded in a $70,000 renovation in 1996 that was privately funded by money raised by the Friends of the Redondo Beach Dog Park group, which had been the driving force behind the park.

In 1997, Torrance decided against the idea after dog owners, sparked by the installation of a dog water fountain in Miramar Park, began allowing their dogs to run free there on the assumption that the city was sanctioning it as an off-leash area.

In August 1998, dog owners who had been unofficially using Angels Gate Park in San Pedro as leash-free zone were informed that it was illegal to do so.

Chief Al Nero joined the department in fall of 1999 bringing with him a wealth of knowledge about wildland-urban interface.

The area went from an informal arrangement to an officially sanctioned off-leash park in March 2000.

In October 2001, L.A. City Councilwoman Janice Hahn proposed using the top of Knoll Hill as a dog park.

Dogs and their owners are off and running as the long-awaited of-leash dog park is finally opened at the top of Knoll Hill in San Pedro in August 2002. (Daily Breeze staff file photo)

Noting the existence of Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach, Assemblyman Mike Gordon proposed in February 2005 that a one-mile area of Dockweiler State Beach near El Segundo be established as a leash-free zone.

With no sanctioned dog park available in the Harbor Area, the ban in Angels Gate Park gave activists renewed energy in the drive to set up a dog park in the area, forming the nonprofit group Peninsula Dog Parks Inc. It pleased dog owners until 2006, when it was bumped form the site by the Eastview Little League, which built ballfields there after its former San Pedro field was displaced by a new Target store.

People play with their dogs in the water in this 2010 file photo from Rosie’s Dog Beach in Long Beach, located at the end of Granada Avenue. (Press-Telegram file photo)

On May 3, 2011, Wolfgang "Wolf" Knabe became the City of Brea’s Fire Chief.

A small neighborhood dog beach was established on Newport Beach’s northern border in April 2016.

The tree-shaded current Knoll Hill dog park in San Pedro is smaller than most, and much smaller than its predecessor on top of the hill. (June 2017 Daily Breeze photo)