Baldwin Hills

The Baldwin Hills were named for Lucky Baldwin, and there has been a lot of history in the hills. They were the site of the very first Olympic Athlete Village during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. They were also the site of the Baldwin Hills Dam collapse in 1963.

Baldwin Hills Estates (east of La Brea, southwest of Santo Tomas Drive, south of the Jim Gilliam Recreation Center and north of Stocker Street), one of the wealthiest and richest majority-African American areas in the United States, and is sometimes called "the Black Beverly Hills".  It includes the so-called Dons, winding streets with "modernistic" homes, panoramic views of the city, and such street names as "Don Luis", "Don Felipe", "Don Lorenzo”, “Don Miguel”, etc. The area is characterized by hillside houses with swimming pools, and some condominiums (the latter often jut out from steep hillsides, perched on stilts).

The Baldwin Hills area consists of two ridges on the West Side of Los Angeles. The hills are surrounded on the west by Sepulveda Boulevard, then north to Jefferson Boulevard, and East on Rodeo to Crenshaw Boulevard, then south to Centinela and West back to Sepulveda Boulevard. The hills encompass parts of the communities of Ladera Heights, View Park, Windsor Hills, Culver City, Blair Hills, Baldwin Hills Estates, and Baldwin Hills Village. In terms of political jurisdictions, the Baldwin Hills include parts of the City of Los Angeles, Culver City, Inglewood, and unincorporated Los Angeles County.

There are several parks within the Baldwin Hills, including Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. A state agency, the Baldwin Hills Conservancy, was established to acquire additional land within the hills, to form "one big park" on the West Side of Los Angeles. From parts of the hills one has views east to Downtown Los Angeles, South to San Pedro and Long Beach, West to the ocean, Santa Monica Bay, and Malibu, and North to the Hollywood Hills.

Geologically speaking, much of the Baldwin Hills remain part of the active Inglewood oil fields and there is an earthquake fault that runs beneath the hills.