It’s no coincidence that Burbank has a Beachwood Drive one mile north of the older Beachwood Drive in the Hollywood Hills. There was in fact a plan to bore a traffic tunnel through Griffith Park that would connect the two streets, as proposed in June 1924 by the newly-formed Greater San Fernando Valley Association. Three months earlier, a tract of unknown ownership laid out Burbank’s Beachwood Drive, Griffith Park Drive, and Parkside Avenue in anticipation. Three separate Griffith Park tunnels via Bronson, Western, and Vermont avenues were ultimately conceived, yet despite the heavy hitters behind the scheme – including, at various times, Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, Burbank developer Earl L. White (see Hollywood Way), urban planner Gordon Whitnall, and even movie mogul Cecil B. DeMille – they never obtained the financing or the approval. The last tunnel talk was in 1946, which not coincidentally was the year Forest Lawn purchased the land for their Hollywood Hills cemetery. The only digging after that was for graves.
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