Often missed by visitors to Los Angeles is Griffith Park. In fact, many residents of Los Angeles do not know about this spectacular area. When you think of Los Angeles, you think of beaches, palm trees, stars, and freeways. But did you know that Los Angeles has the largest municipal park and urban wilderness area in the United States?

Los Angeles' Griffith Park is a HUGE park with everything: four public golf courses, tennis courts, horse stables, a zoo, picnic areas, hiking trails, bike trails, public BBQ pits, ponds, streams, and a gorgeous tropical mini rainforest-like area known as Fern Dell. The park, named after Griffith J. Griffith, a mining tycoon who donated the park's 3,000 acres to the city in 1896, has been used to film several movies, including Batman, Jurassic Park, and the classic Rebel Without a Cause.

Located high atop Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills in Griffith Park is the Griffith Observatory, another Los Angeles landmark not to be missed! This hill gives you a fantastic view of Los Angeles and the Observatory itself features an impressive planetarium giving you a view of the real stars in Los Angeles. It was here that a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger stood and looked out over the city in the original "THE TERMINATOR" (1984). And almost 30 years earlier, James Dean shot the knife fight scene of the classic 1955 film "REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE" in the observatory's parking lot. (In recognition, there's a large bust of James Dean on the west side of the Observatory.) The park itself has been used as a backdrop for hundreds of films, most recently "JURASSIC PARK" and 1991's "THE ROCKETEER."

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