LOS ANGELES — Anthropologist Susan Phillips had spent a career examining the graffiti that covers urban walls, bridges, and freeway overpasses. But when she came across a collection made not of spray paint but substances like grease pencil and apparently left there for a century, she was stunned.
Phillips had uncovered a peculiar, almost extinct form of American hieroglyphics known as hobo graffiti, the treasure trove discovered under a nondescript, 103-year-old bridge spanning the Los Angeles River.
At the time, she was researching her book, ‘‘Wallbangin’: Graffiti and Gangs in LA.’’
‘‘It was like opening a tomb that’s been closed for 80 years,’’ the Pitzer College professor of environmental analysis said of finding the writings and occasionally the drawings of people who once signed their names as Oakland Red, the Tucson Kid, and A-No. 1.
‘‘There’s an A-No. 1, dated 8/13/14,’’ she said, pointing to a scribbling during a recent visit to the bridge just around the bend from a modern-day homeless encampment.
Although all but forgotten now, A-No. 1 was the moniker of arguably America’s most famous hobo, one of the many itinerant wanderers who traveled from town to town in the 19th and 20th centuries, often by freight train, in search of brief work and lasting adventure.
‘‘Those little heart things are actually stylized arrows that are pointing up the river,’’ Phillips said, pointing to markings next to the name. ‘‘Putting those arrows that way means ‘I’m going upriver. I was here on this date and I’m going upriver.’?’’
Upriver would have been in the direction of the city’s sprawling, wooded Griffith Park, in those days a popular jumping-off point for hobos looking for a safe, common gathering spot.
Nearby is a faded drawing of a man riding a bucking bronco that is signed and dated by the Tucson Kid, July 1, 1921.
Hobo graffiti, once found all over the country, have largely vanished in recent years, she and other experts say. Absent a few exceptions, they have been covered over by more recent, more colorful spray-painted images or eliminated entirely by time, weather, or cleanup campaigns.
‘‘A lot of the stuff I’ve documented through time has been destroyed, either by the city or by other graffiti writers, and that is just the way of graffiti,’’ said Phillips, whose research is being funded by a Getty Center grant.
She also is looking into ways to preserve — perhaps digitally — what’s left of the fragile markings, including some etched into concrete by spikes taken from the nearby railroad.
Associated Press
