Getting the Slant on L.A.'s Steepest Street

There's a steep price to pay for living on Eldred Street.

You have cars that run away. Truck cargos that roll away. Mail carriers who fade away. Visitors who turn around and go away.

"To live here, you learn what you can and can't do," said Ric Phiegh, whose Highland Park home is on the steepest street in Los Angeles.

In a city bisected by a mountain range and laced with hills and ridges, that distinction is high praise.

Experts calculate that Eldred gains 219 feet in elevation as it climbs a stomach-clutching 33% grade between Avenue 50 and Cross Avenue on the side of Mt. Washington.

True, a portion of a street in San Pedro has a tiny stretch of pavement with a 33.3% grade. But Eldred is in an elevated class of its own because the slope runs for a long stretch.

Special scaled-down garbage trucks are assigned to pick up trash on Eldred Street each Tuesday morning.

And their two-man crews back up the steep incline before inching their way down the street to pick up trash.

That way their truck won't tip over when they try to turn around at the top of street.

Letter carriers have given up on house-to-house deliveries, although one longtime mailman braved the slope in a squeaky-braked truck for years.

Mail is now distributed in group mailboxes at the base of the hill.

Some street maps mistakenly suggest that Eldred is a through street. But a rickety wooden stairway connects its dead end with Cross Avenue farther up the hill.

Eldred residents have been known to rescue unsuspecting motorists from the top of their street by volunteering to drive stranded, panic-stricken strangers' cars down for them.

"One thing you cannot do is get off the paved road if it's raining or wet. You'll slide sideways down the hill," said Phiegh, 46-year-old construction inspector who has lived on the street for seven years.

One neighbor's car slid down the driveway into the street and then rolled down Eldred, zigzagging down the hill without hitting anything until it veered off the road, ran up on a small embankment and flipped over on its roof and hood, he said.

"Luckily no one was in it. My neighbor ran out screaming, 'My car! My car!' " he said. "Another time, I used an 8-foot 2-by-4 to pry a police car off the wall in my frontyard after it slid downhill into it."

Neighbor Rob Schraff, a 43-year-old advertising writer, said he gives friends specific instructions on how to navigate the hill the first time they visit.