In 1885, a new amusement park opened beside the Los Angeles River near Griffith Park -- an ostrich farm. Sunday visitors from Los Angeles came part of the way by trolley then boarded horse-drawn carriages to complete the trip.

On Sept. 24, 1888, the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm Railway began steam-engine service to the park. It became the second railroad to reach the Valley, after the Southern Pacific line to San Fernando that opened fourteen years earlier. Enough fares made the trip that the next year, the rails were extended four miles past the ostrich farm to the new boom town of Burbank, founded on the former Rancho Providencia by Dr. David Burbank.

Five trains a day (six on Sundays) stopped at the farm and at Burbank for the short time the railroad operated. Ever so briefly, riders could board in Burbank, population a few hundred, and travel on the renamed Los Angeles and Pacific Railway all the way to Santa Monica, another boom town.

By the end of 1889, however, the Burbank route had shut down. The tracks were so poorly laid that, in April, an engine simply toppled over. The fate of this particular ostrich farm is unknown, although others could be found around Los Angeles, including at about the same time the Wilshire Ostrich Farm run by H. Gaylord Wilshire (the nakesake of Wilshire Boulevard) at 12th Street and Grand Avenue near downtown.