Chavez Ravine is a shallow L-shaped canyon in Los Angeles, California. It sits in a large promontory of hills north of downtown Los Angeles, next to Major League Baseball's Dodger Stadium. Chavez Ravine was named for Julian Chavez, a Los Angeles councilman in the 19th century who originally purchased the land in the Elysian Park area. History 1800s Chavez Ravine was named for Julian Chavez, the first recorded land owner in the ravine. He was born in New Mexico and moved to Los Angeles in the early 1830s. He quickly became a local leader. In 1844, Chavez purchased of the long, narrow valley northwest of the city. There are no records of what Chavez did on his land, but during the 1850s and 1880s there were smallpox epidemics; Chavez Canyon was the location of a "pest house" which cared for Chinese-Americans and Mexican-Americans suffering from the disease. In addition to the notable Mexican-American presence, there was also a notable early Jewish-American presence in the neighborhood beginning in the 1850s. The First Jewish site in Los Angeles was a Jewish cemetery located in Chavez Ravine, which opened in 1855 and was owned by the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles, a Jewish charity which was also the first charity in Los Angeles. The Hebrew Benevolent Society purchased a 3-acre plot of barren land for the cemetery for $1 from the city. The Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles was founded in 1854 for the purpose of "…procuring a piece of ground suitable for the purpose of a burying ground for the deceased of their own faith, and also to appropriate a portion of their time and means to the holy cause of benevolence…,". The Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles received the deed to land from the Los Angeles City Council on April 9, 1855. With this land they established the first Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles at Lilac Terrace and Lookout Drive in Chavez Ravine. The site now includes Dodger Stadium and the Los Angeles Fire Department's Frank Hotchkin Memorialized Training Center. The land was very rugged which prevented further development of the area at the time. However the area did provide an important watershed and part was used by the Los Angeles Water Company for a canal bringing water from what is now Griffith Park and storing it in a reservoir (today called Buena Vista Reservoir) in Reservoir Ravine.