Parts of Highland Park we cover
- Garvanza
- Sycamore Grove
- North Figueroa Street
- York Boulevard
- Arroyo Seco Park
- Debs Park
- Avenue 57 and Marmion Way
- Lummis House (El Alisal)
Where rodents get in around Highland Park
Victorian and Shingle-style houses
Queen Anne and Shingle-style houses from the late 1800s have steep roofs, towers, wood shingles and decorative trim with many joints. Wood shrinks and shifts over a century, and the gaps at those joints are wide enough for mice, which fit through very small openings.
The Arroyo Seco corridor
The Arroyo Seco channel, the parkway and the parks along them form a long green strip through the neighborhood. Trees, brush and open ground there give rodents cover, and houses on the streets that back onto the arroyo are the first ones they reach.
Figueroa and York storefronts
North Figueroa Street and York Boulevard are lined with restaurants, bars and shops in older commercial buildings, several of them inside the HPOZ. Shared walls and old plumbing runs let mice move from one business to the next, and commercial rodent control covers these buildings.
Steep lots toward Debs Park and Mount Washington
On the slopes toward Debs Park, Montecito Heights and Mount Washington, houses sit high above the street on long stairs and retaining walls. Roof rats move from the wooded hillside onto roofs along branches and power lines, and the uphill side of the house is often the least watched.
Age matters here: vent screens, eaves and foundations open up over the decades, and those small gaps are how mice and rats get in.
