Description
The papers of Marion Parks, a talented and resourceful
personality in Los Angeles during the early 1900s, relate to the history of Southern
California. Parks described herself as "a California historian." Her principal
contributions in this capacity were a series of still-useful booklets published while
she was publicity writer for Security-First National Bank, and the organization of
colorful historical pageants (in the Spanish style) in several California towns. Her
local history files contain typescripts of her own writings as well as quantities of
vintage pamphlets and brochures, mostly from 1930s. Correspondence files date from about
the 1920s to the 1940s. The collection also includes 197 photographs taken by Marion
Parks of parades, historical pageants, and other events in and around Los Angeles that
were probably taken in the late 1920s and early 1930s.