Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Francisco Giants, April 1958‪.‬

The Los Angeles Dodgers may have begun and the Brooklyn Dodgers may have ended on a pleasant October day in Los Angeles in 1956. After losing to the New York Yankees in the World Series, the Dodgers flew cross-country on their way to a goodwill baseball tour of Japan. During their stopover in Los Angeles, Brooklyn owner Walter O'Malley met County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn for a helicopter ride around the city. But their purpose was not to see the sights; they were investigating possible places to put a new baseball stadium, should the Brooklyn franchise elect to pull up stakes and move west. The search focused on Chavez Ravine, a three-hundred acre parcel of public land north of downtown. Named after Julian Chavez, a former owner of the land and a past city councilman, the site had been a source of controversy for years. In a bitterly contested civic debate, Los Angeles voters had turned down a proposal to build public housing there. Partly on the strength of his opposition to the referendum, Norris Poulson won election as mayor a few years later.