Elysian Park is a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, California, encompassing Chavez Ravine, with a mostly a low-income community of 2,600+ people. Besides the city park of the same name,Dodger Stadium is also located within the neighborhood, as are Los Angeles's first Catholic high school, an elementary school and the Los Angeles Police Academy.
The southeastern corner of the park is near the Los Angeles River at the location where the Portolá expedition gave the river its name in 1769. The first Europeans to see inland areas of California camped near this spot on August 2, and California Historical Landmark #655 ("Portolá Trail Campsite") is located at the Meadow Road entrance.
The park is the second largest park in Los Angeles at 600 acres (2.4 km²). It is also the city's oldest park, founded in 1886 by the Elysian Park Enabling Ordinance. It hosted shooting as well as the shooting part of the modern pentathlon event for the 1932 Summer Olympics. In 1964 the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park was founded to prevent the City of Los Angeles from constructing the Municipal Convention Center on 62 acres (250,000 m2) of park land.
In 1968, it hosted a hippie "Love-In."
According to the Mapping L.A. project of the Los Angeles Times, the Elysian Park neighborhood is flanked on the north and northeast by Elysian Valley, on the east by Lincoln Heights, on the southeast and south by Chinatown and on the southwest, west and northwest by Echo Park. Street and other boundaries are: the northern apex at Exit 138 of the Golden State Freeway, thence southeasterly along the freeway, southerly along the Los Angeles River, westerly along North Broadway, northwesterly along Stadium Way, Academy Road and northerly along Elysian Park Drive.