Bixby Slough

Bixby Slough (American English pronunciation: “slew/slu”[1]) was an ancient wetland in Los Angeles County, California.

[3] Originally a "network of sloughs, nondescript streams and bogs in the harbor district,"[4] over time the Port of Los Angeles was carved “out of the mud flats and shallow waters that edged the ranchos of San Pedro and Palos Verdes.”[5] About 90 percent of wetland ecosystems in Los Angeles County have been destroyed, with the losses in the highly urbanized South Bay "especially acute" and one biologist calling the draining of Bixby Slough and other harbor-area wetlands a “"wipeout".

[3] ”Shallow freshwater marsh located between the towns of Wilmington and Lomita…the water surface [may be only] few acres during a series of dry years” but contains catfish, according to the California Fish and Game report of 1939.

[21] “The slimy, sucking and treacherous character of the soil beneath the water” was assigned blame for dangerous conditions in the Slough.

It has already been explored to a depth of forty feet [12 m] without any change of quality.”[12] What is now the lake at the recreation area “extended northeast over a wider area and was surrounded by willows, bulrushes, milk thistles and other grasslike vegetation.”[7] The Harbor Park and recently constructed Bixby Marshland are recent mitigation attempts to restore some of the ecosystem services lost to the destruction of the Bixby Slough.