Mount Lee
| Mount Lee | |
|---|---|
Southeastern face of Mount Lee, 2006.
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| Highest point | |
| Elevation | 1,708 ft (521 m) NAVD 88 |
| Coordinates | 34°08′05″N 118°19′18″W / 34.134597025°N 118.321740739°WCoordinates: 34°08′05″N 118°19′18″W / 34.134597025°N 118.321740739°W |
| Geography | |
| Location | Los Angeles County, California, U.S. |
| Parent range | Santa Monica Mountains |
| Topo map | USGS Burbank |
| Climbing | |
| Easiest route | Hike |
Mount Lee is a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains, located in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California, USA. The famous Hollywood Sign is located on its southern slope. A good view of it can be had by driving north up Gower Street from Hollywood Boulevard to see the sign directly ahead, and then north along Beachwood Drive. One can also take Franklin Ave. directly to Beachwood; this is the location of the Hollywoodland suburb for which the sign was created.
The original unnamed peak was one of the "three sisters" along with Cahuenga and Burbank peaks, the current flattened top being a result of silent movie pioneer Mack Sennett's unfulfilled plans to build an elaborate home on the property. To advertise the new Beachwood Canyon real estate development, the developers, including Sennett and Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, ordered a huge wooden sign built atop what is now known as Mount Lee. The mountain is named after early Los Angeles car dealer and radio station owner Don Lee. Lee, a one-time bicycle shop owner who became a protégé of Los Angeles pioneer businessman Earle C. Anthony, purchased his Los Angeles radio station KHJ from Chandler in 1927.
Four years later Lee began experimenting with television using call letter W6XAO. Studios were on the seventh floor of a building at Seventh and Bixel near his Cadillac dealership. Within a short time the transmitter was moved atop what is now called Mount Lee. An early reference to this name is in a June 1939 article in a magazine published by the California Chamber of Commerce: “Lee has bought a 20-acre site on a mountain top at the eastern boundary of Griffith Park, widening the transmission field of the Don Lee equipment to take in new thousands of homes in the Hollywood hills and the San Fernando Valley. The site is one and a half times higher than the top floor of the Empire State Building in New York. Mount Lee is thus the highest television location in the world. The transmitter is being rebuilt for installation on the mountain.”
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Wikipedia