The papers of Marion Parks, a talented and resourceful personality in Los Angeles during the early 1900s, relate to the history of Southern California. Parks described herself as "a California historian." Her principal contributions in this capacity were a series of still-useful booklets published while she was publicity writer for Security-First National Bank, and the organization of colorful historical pageants (in the Spanish style) in several California towns. Her local history files contain typescripts of her own writings as well as quantities of vintage pamphlets and brochures, mostly from 1930s. Correspondence files date from about the 1920s to the 1940s. The collection also includes 197 photographs taken by Marion Parks of parades, historical pageants, and other events in and around Los Angeles that were probably taken in the late 1920s and early 1930s.