Video Observer: A Duckless Duck Pond with a History in Hillcrest Park

Update: Date was printed incorrectly. It should be 1924, not 1934. 

Early on an April morning, I was hiking through Hillcrest Park. Following park trails northwest of the fountain facing Harbor, I made my way to the duck pond, which dates back to 1924. Now a much smaller body of water, it is surrounded by thriving riparian vegetation and a network of walkways. Benches and informational signs line the edges of this earthy embankment, but oddly enough, there are no ducks in this pond. While this part of the park has been fixed up significantly since I started coming here in the early 2000s, I decided to ask around the Fullerton community to see what people remember about the duck pond’s past, and find out how it is being maintained today.

​On my morning walk, I navigated the pathways that loop around this pond, and learned more about the different types of plant life growing here just by reading signs installed by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. There are California Sycamore trees, White Alder, Arroyo Willow, and Coast Live Oak around the pond as well as ornamental grasses and shrubs, such as Purple Three Awn, California Gray Rush, Small Cape Rush, Dwarf Coyote Bush, California Buckwheat, Island Bush Snapdragon, Cleveland Sage and California Fuchsia.

I was curious as to how Fullerton maintains this pond, so I emailed the city and received a response from David Bishop, Landscape & Tree Manager for the City of Fullerton’s Public Works Division, who wrote via email, “The Duck Pond is visited weekly by our landscape maintenance staff. Work activities vary and may include trimming shrubs, weeding, and trash pickup. Each year, after the winter rains have subsided, staff also enter the center water area to remove silt and debris that accumulate among the rocks and soil. This area can be labor-intensive due to the water and rocks that staff must work around.”

According to signs around the pond, “Riparian vegetation acts as a natural biofilter by resisting the flow of floodwaters and increasing the time available for water to infiltrate into the soil, reducing pollution in surface runoff and recharging groundwater…Restoring this native vegetation to the Duck Pond will encourage the return of native wildlife, such as ducks, pollinating birds, lizards, insects, and other wildlife that benefit from native riparian environments.”

Underneath one tree close to the stone bridge, I found a city plaque that commemorated when this version of the Hillcrest Lily/Duck pond was dedicated: November 2020. Local author and Fullerton Heritage research historian Deb Richey remembers serving on the Hillcrest Park Advisory Committee, which was started in 2009 to prepare a master plan for the park. Richey recalls that when the grant came down from the government, those funds were used by the city; however, by the time the committee was formed, the area was in bad shape.

​Richey said, “When the Hillcrest Park Committee met with nearby residents, nearly all remembered the ducks. I know that it got too expensive to keep draining the water for the ducks…a lot of people remembered feeding them as children. There are postcards in the Fullerton Public Library’s Local History Room of the long-gone duck park. A few others remembered that it was used as a shooting range by law enforcement.”

Based on archived photos viewed in the Fullerton Public Library’s Local History Room, it seems that the duck pond dates back to as early as 1934. Cheri Pape, Local History Room Archivist, used the photos to show me how water from the duck pond may have initially led under the park’s stone bridge to a Japanese garden with lily pads, before heading into the county flood control channel; this garden, on the opposite side of the bridge from the duck pond, was removed once World War II started.

Kay Miller, who has been attached to Hillcrest Park one way or another since the 1950s, includes these types of historical anecdotes on the tours she now leads for Fullerton Heritage.

“The pond came painfully into my 8-year-old life when I ran down the trail and fell, scraping my hands and knees, but I saved my sack of bread to feed the ducks,” said Miller. “I was just one of thousands of people to feed the ducks over those years, but this was the beginning of the evolution to the duckless duck pond we see today.”

“In its early days, the pond was a depository for all the ducks that kids received at Easter,” she said. “As the cute ducklings grew into noisy and messy adult ducks, they were ‘gifted’ to the Hillcrest pond, and these ducks stayed. This was a maintenance issue for the city, which had to institute population control. Unbeknownst to park users, periodically, there was a duck roundup very early in the morning. Those ducks were donated to a church-affiliated boys’ school and became duck dinners! For maintenance reasons, the earthen and gooey-sided pond became a concrete-lined wide swale leading to the Orange County Flood Control channel. By that point, it was generally known that feeding ducks bread and chips not only makes them stay, but is harmful to their health.

​Interestingly, she saved a duck pond postcard from the 1950s. In this photo, there are a bunch of turquoise-colored cars, plenty of ducks, and a palm tree at the water’s edge, which is still there today.

​One tour attendee on Miller’s Park walks recounted to her that she lived adjacent to the park with her husband, who was a judge at the nearby County Courthouse, so he would walk through the park to work most days. This resident was worried about her husband’s safety due to some sketchy park users, and one day, he called her saying, “You’re right! I was attacked this morning. I dropped my briefcase, and papers flew. I had to run.” She was really shaken until he explained that it wasn’t people, but pond geese and ducks that had chased him off their territory.

​“In about 2020, some grant money became available for riparian restoration projects,” said Miller. “The city redirected park dwelling funds from the Hillcrest lower picnic area to become the needed matching money for the grant to ‘redecorate’ the duck pond as it’s seen today. Using the existing concrete swale, holes were punched in it to plant vegetation to attract migrating fowl. The surrounding area was planted and augmented with interpretive signage and complementary seating. The stone bridge on the western end was restored, and as an homage to the original use of branches for the sides, the new metal siding mimics that look.”

This duck pond area is now easily accessible by pulling into a turnout off Brea Boulevard (found on the opposite side of the street from the Fullerton Towers parking lot). I have to say that on my morning walk through the area, there were quite a few dog owners taking a stroll next to the duck pond, so despite there being no ducks in the pond, this part of the park is still used by many. Hopefully, the ducks return someday.

For anyone interested in learning more about the duck species or other wildlife at the Hillcrest Park pond, visit and observe the park or call the city’s Parks and Recreation Department at (714) 738-6575.

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