History of Los Angeles, California
Encyclopedia
Los Angeles changed rapidly after 1848, when California
was transferred to the United States
as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
that ended the Mexican-American War. Much greater changes were to come from the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
in 1876.
For the next 120 years of Los Angeles' growth, it was plagued by often violent ethnic and class conflict, reflected in the struggle over who would control the city's identity, image, geography and history.
show there was a seafaring culture in Southern California
in 8,000 B.C.
By 3,000 B.C. the area was occupied by the Hokan-speaking people of the Milling Stone Period who fished, hunted sea mammals, and gathered wild seeds. They were later replaced by migrants — possibly fleeing drought in the Great Basin
— who spoke a Uto-Aztecan language called Tongva
, who were later named by the Spanish as the Gabrielinos and Fernandeños. The Tongva people called the Los Angeles region Yaa in Tongva
.
By the time of the arrival of the Spaniard in the 18th century A.D., there were 250,000 to 300,000 native people in California and 5,000 in the Los Angeles basin. Since contact with Europeans, the people in what became Los Angeles were known as Gabrielinos and Fernandeños, after the missions associated with them.
The land occupied and used by the Gabrielinos covered about four thousand square miles. It included the enormous floodplain drained by the Los Angeles
and San Gabriel
rivers and the southern Channel Islands
, including the Santa Barbara
, San Clemente, Santa Catalina, and San Nicholas Islands. They were part of a sophisticated group of trading partners that included the Chumash to the north, the Cahuilla
and Mojave to the east, and the Juaneños and Luiseños to the south. Their trade extended to the Colorado River
and included slavery
.
The lives of the Gabrielinos were governed by a set of religious and cultural practices that included belief in creative supernatural forces. They worshipped a creator god, Chinigchinix
, and a female virgin god, Chukit. Their Great Morning Ceremony was based on a belief in the afterlife. In a purification ritual similar to the Eucharist
, they drank tolguache, a hallucinogenic made from jimson weed and salt water. Their language was called Kizh or Kij, and they practiced cremation
.
Generations before the arrival of the Europeans, the Gabrielinos had identified and lived in the best sites for human occupation. The survival and success of Los Angeles would depend greatly on the presence of a nearby and prosperous Gabrielino village called Yaanga. Its residents would provide the colonists with seafood, fish, bowls, pelts, and baskets. For pay, they would dig ditches, haul water, and provide domestic help. They often intermarried with the Mexican colonists.
In 1542 the first Europeans to visit the Los Angeles region were Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
and his crew. They were sailing up the coast looking for a new passage to Asia. In 1602, Captain Sebastián Vizcaíno
dropped anchor at Santa Catalina Island
and near San Pedro. It would be another 166 years before another European would visit the region.
. He was in charge of implementing Bourbon administrative reforms. His reorganization included plans for the further exploration of Alta California and the settlement of a whole line of missions and presidios ("military forts"). The military forts were not self-sustaining, and the missions would supply them with goods and food.
Galvez petitioned the king to approve these plans with these arguments: 1. It would provide new revenues for the Vice Royalty governing New Spain. 2. It would protect the Spanish Empire in North America, especially from the encroaching Russians. 3. It would provide a base for increasing trade with Asia. The plans also had the support of the Franciscans who wanted to open new missions in Alta California.
Galvez's petition resulted in the formation of a joint land-and -sea expedition. Its primary purpose was to occupy Monterey
(which had been visited by Vizcaíno in 1602) and establish new missions and presidios there and in San Diego
.
To lead the expedition, Galvez appointed the new governor of California Lieutenant Colonel Gaspar de Portola
and Father Junipero Serra
, Franciscan head of the former Jesuit missions in Baja California.
During the land expedition from San Diego to Monterey, engineer Michael Costanso and Father Juan Crespi
accompanied Portola. They kept careful notes of all they observed. Reaching the future site of Los Angeles, the party camped out along side a river. Portola named the river Porciuncula.
The name came from an approaching Franciscan religious celebration that honored the mother church of the Franciscans, the Porziuncola
("small piece of land") in the Italian frazione
of Saint Mary of the Angels.
Father Crespi made these observations:
.
In 1777 Neve toured Alta California and decided to establish civic pueblos for the support of the military presidios. Neve was a Renaissance person. The new pueblos would reduce the secular power of the missions by reducing the dependency of the military on them. At the same time, they would promote the development of industry and agriculture.
Neve identified Santa Barbara, San Jose, and Los Angeles as sites for his new pueblos. His plans for them closely followed a set of Spanish city-planning laws contained in the Laws of the Indies
promulgated by King Philip II
in 1573. Those laws were responsible for laying the foundations of the largest cities in the region, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, and San Antonio—as well as Sonoma, Monterey, Santa Fe, San Jose, and Laredo.
The royal regulations were based on the ancient teachings of Vitruvius
, who set down the rules for founding of new cities in the Roman Empire. Basically, the Spanish laws called for an open central plaza, surrounded by a fortified church, administrative buildings, and streets laid out in a grid, defining rectangles of limited size to be used for farming (suertes) and residences (solares).
It was in accordance with such precise planning—specified in the Law of the Indies—that Governor Neve founded the pueblo of San Jose de Guadalupe, California's first municipality, on the great plain of Santa Clara on 29 November 1777.
("townspeople") is the name given to the 44 original settlers, 22 adults and 22 children, who founded the town.
In December, 1777 Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa
and Commandant General Teodoro de Croix
gave approval for the founding of a civic municipality at Los Angeles and a new presidio at Santa Barbara.
Croix put the California lieutenant governor Fernando Rivera y Moncada
in charge of recruiting colonists for the new settlements. He was originally instructed to recruit 55 soldiers, 22 settlers with families and 1,000 head of livestock that included horses for the military. After an exhausting search that took him to Mazatlan, Rosario, and Durango, Rivera y Moncada only recruited 12 settlers and 45 soldiers. Like the people of most towns in New Spain, they were a mix of Indian and Spanish backgrounds. Croix instructed Rivera y Moncada to delay no longer and proceed north. The soldiers, settlers, and livestock were assembled at Alamos, Sonora, before departure.
They were divided into two groups. One group, under Alfèrez Josè de Zúñiga and Alfèrez Ramon Laso de la Vega, set out for the coast. They crossed the Gulf of California on launches and then travelled overland to San Diego and up to San Gabriel.
The second group, under Rivera y Moncada, took an overland route over the desert, passing by the new missions on the Colorado River, La Purísima Concepción and Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer
. The group arrived at the Colorado River in June 1781. Rivera y Moncada sent most of his party ahead, but he stayed behind to rest the livestock before their drive across the desert. His party would never reach San Gabriel. The Quechan
and Mojave Indians rose up against the party for encroaching on their farmlands and for other abuses inflicted by the soldiers. The Quechan Revolt was swift and killed 95 settlers and soldiers, including Rivera y Moncada.
Governor Neve had arrived in San Gabriel in April to finish his plans, El Reglamento, and select the exact location for Los Angeles. He carefully attended to every detail.
While waiting for the colonists to arrive, he visited Yaanga, the Indian village near his selected site. He selected several children for reception into the Church and baptized a young couple and had their marriage blessed. In his Reglamento, the newly baptized Indians were no longer to reside in the mission but live in their traditional rancherías (villages). Neve's new plans for the Indians' role in his new town drew instant disapproval from the mission priests.
Zúñiga's party arrived at the mission on 18 July 1781. Because they had arrived with smallpox, they were immediately quarantined a short distance away from the mission. Members of the other party would arrive at different times by August. They made their way to Los Angeles and probably received their land before September.
, or settlers, gathered at San Gabriel Mission
and, escorted by soldiers and two padres from the mission, set out for the chosen spot that Crespí had recorded twelve years earlier. According to historian Antonio Rios-Bustamante, however, the families had arrived from Mexico earlier in 1781, in two groups, and some of them had most likely been working on their assigned plots of land since the early summer.
The name first given to the settlement is debated. Historian Doyce P. Nunis has said that the Spanish named it "El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles" ("The Town of the Queen of the Angels"). For proof, he pointed to a map dated 1785, where that phrase was used. Frank Weber, the diocesan archivist, replied, however, that the name given by the founders was "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula," or "the town of Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula." and that the map was in error.
By 1821 Los Angeles had grown into a self-sustaining farming community, the largest in Southern California. Its development conformed strictly to the Law of the Indies and the Reglamento of Governor Neve. The pueblo itself included a square of 10,000 varas, five and a quarter miles on each side. The central Plaza was in the middle, 75 varas (208 ft.) wide and 100 varas (277 ft.) long. On the west side of the Plaza facing east, space was reserved for a church and municipal buildings. Each vecino
received a solar (lot) 20 varas (55.5 ft.) wide and 40 varas (110 ft.) long.
Each settler also received four rectangles of land, suertes, for farming, two irrigated plots and two dry ones. Each plot was 200 square varas. The farm plots were separated from the pueblo by a tract of land 200 varas wide. Some plots of land, propios, were set aside for the pueblo's general use and revenue. Other plots of land, realengas, were set aside for future settlers. Land outside the city, baldíos, included mountains, rivers, lakes, and forests, and belonged to the king.
When the settlers arrived, the Los Angeles floodplain was heavily wooded with willows and oaks. The Los Angeles river flowed all year. Wildlife was plentiful, including deer, antelope, and bear, even an occasional grizzly. There were abundant wetlands and swamps. Steelhead and salmon swam the rivers.
The first settlers built a water system consisting of ditches (zanjas) leading from the river through the middle of town and into the farmlands. Indians were employed to haul fresh drinking water from a special pool farther upstream. The city was first known as a producer of fine wine grapes. The raising of cattle and the commerce in tallow and hides would come later.
Because of the great economic potential for Los Angeles, the demand for Indian labor grew rapidly. Yaanga began attracting Indians from the islands and as far away as San Diego and San Luis Obispo. The village began to look like a refugee camp. Unlike the missions, the pobladores paid Indians for their labor. In exchange for their work as farm workers, vaqueros, ditch diggers, water haulers, and domestic help; they were paid in clothing and other goods as well as cash and alcohol. The pobladores bartered with them for prized sea-otter and seal pelts, sieves, trays, baskets, mats, and other woven goods. This commerce greatly contributed to the economic success of the town and the attraction of other Indians to the city.
During the 1780s, San Gabriel Mission became the object of an Indian revolt. The mission had expropriated all the suitable farming land; the Indians found themselves abused and forced to work on lands that they once owned. A young Indian healer, Toypurina
began touring the area, preaching against the injustices suffered by her people. She won over four rancherías and led them in an attack on the mission at San Gabriel. The soldiers were able to defend the mission, and arrested 17, including Toypurina.
Because the Indians were exploited, starved, beaten, and raped in the pueblo as often as anywhere else, the officials knew they had to protect them to assure a cheap supply of labor. In 1787 Governor Pedro Fages
drew up his "Instructions for the Corporal Guard of the Pueblo of Los Angeles." The Instructions included rules for employing Indians, not using corporal punishment, and protecting the Indian rancherías. As a result, Indians found themselves with more freedom to choose between the benefits of the missions and the pueblo-associated rancherías.
In 1784 California's first three ranchos were granted to soldiers, all in Los Angeles County. Rancho San Pedro
was given to Juan José Dominguez, Rancho San Rafael
to José María Verdugo
, and Rancho Los Nietos
to Mañuel Nieto. The grants stipulated that Indian employees stay clear of San Gabriel, further drawing them away from the missions and closer to the life of the pueblo.
In 1795, Sergeant Pablo Cota led an expedition from the Simi Valley through the Conejo-Calabasas region and into the San Fernando Valley. His party visited the rancho of Francisco Reyes. They found the local Indians hard at work as vaqueros and caring for crops. Padre Vincente de Santa Maria was traveling with the party and made these observations:
Not only economic ties but also marriage drew many Indians into the life of the pueblo. In 1784—only three years after the founding—the first recorded marriages in Los Angeles took place. The two sons of settler Basilio Rosas, Maximo and José Carlos, married two young Indian women, María Antonia and María Dolores.
The construction on the Plaza of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles took place between 1818 and 1822, much of it with Indian labor. The new church completed Governor Neve's planned transition of authority from mission to pueblo. The angelinos would no longer have to make the bumpy 11 miles (17.7 km) ride to Sunday Mass at Mission San Gabriel.
In 1820 the route of El Camino Viejo
was established from Los Angeles, over the mountains to the north and up the west side of the San Joaquin Valley
to the east side of San Francisco Bay
.
Although many Indians benefited from assimilation into the life of the pueblo, traditional Indians remained at the bottom of the social ladder and were exploited as workers.
Independence brought other advantages, including economic growth. There was a corresponding increase in population as more Indians were assimilated and others arrived from America, Europe, and other parts of Mexico. Before 1820, there were just 650 people in the pueblo. By 1841, the population nearly tripled to 1,680.
Much of this progress, however, bypassed the Indians of the traditional villages who were not assimilated into the mestizo culture. Being regarded as minors who could not think for themselves, they were increasingly marginalized and relieved of their land titles, often by being drawn into debt or alcohol.
In 1834, Governor Pico was married to Maria Ignacio Alvarado in the Plaza church. It was attended by the entire population of the pueblo, 800 people, plus hundreds from elsewhere in Alta California. In 1835, the Mexican Congress declared Los Angeles a city, making it the official capital of Alta California. It was now the region's leading city.
The same period also saw the arrival of many foreigners from the United States and Europe. They would play a pivotal role in the U.S. takeover. Early California settler John Bidwell
included several historical figures in his recollection of people he knew in March, 1845.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1831, Jean-Louis Vignes he bought 104 acre (0.42087344 km²) of land located between the original Pueblo and the banks of the Los Angeles River
. He planted a vineyard and started preparing to make wine. He named his property El Aliso after the centuries old tree found near the entrance. The grapes available at the time, of the Mission variety
, were brought to Alta California by the Franciscan
Brothers at the end of the 18th century. They grew well and yielded large quantities of wine, but Jean-Louis Vignes was not satisfied with the results. Therefore, he decided to import better vines from Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Franc
and Sauvignon Blanc
. In 1840, Jean-Louis Vignes made the first recorded shipment of California wine. The Los Angeles market was too small for his production, and he loaded a shipment on the Monsoon, bound for Northern California. By 1842, he made regular shipments to Santa Barbara
, Monterey
and San Francisco. By 1849, El Aliso, was the most extensive vineyard in California. Vignes owned over 40,000 vines and produced 150,000 bottles, or 1000 barrels, per year.
anchored off San Pedro and proceeded to march inland to occupy Los Angeles. On August 13, accompanied by John C. Frémont
, Stockton marched into the Los Angeles Plaza with his brass band playing "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia." Stockton's troops occupied the headquarters and home of Governor Pico, who had fled to Mexico. After three weeks of occupation, Stockton left, leaving Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie
in charge.
Subsequent maltreatment by Gillespie and his troops caused a local force of 300 locals to rise up in protest, led by Captain José María Flores
, José Antonio Carrillo
, and Andrés Pico. Flores demanded the Americans surrender and promised safe passage to San Pedro. Gillespie accepted and departed, ending the first phase of the Battle of Los Angeles
.
Full-scale warfare came to the area when Los Angeles residents dug up a colonial cannon that had been used for ceremonial purposes. They had buried it for safe-keeping when Stockton approached the city. They used it to fire on American Navy troops on 8 October 1846, in the Battle of Dominguez Rancho
. The victorious locals named the cannon el piedrero de la vieja (the old woman's gun). In December, the Mexicans were again victorious at the Battle of San Pascual near present-day Escondido.
Determined to take Los Angeles, Stockton regrouped his men in San Diego and marched north with six hundred troops, along with U.S. Army General Stephen Watts Kearny and his guide Kit Carson
. Captain Frémont marched south from Monterey with 400 troops. After a few skirmishes outside the city, the two forces entered Los Angeles, this time without bloodshed.
Confronted with overwhelming force, Andrés Pico
, who had succeeded Flores as military commander and acting as chief administrative officer, met with Fremont. At a ranch in what is now Studio City, they signed the Treaty of Cahuenga
on 13 January 1847. That formally ended the California phase of the Mexican-American War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on 2 February 1848, ended the war and ceded California to the U.S.
California's new military governor Bennett C. Riley ruled that land could not be sold that was not on a city map. In 1849, Lieutenant Edward Ord
surveyed Los Angeles to confirm and extend the streets of the city. His survey put the city into the real-estate business, creating its first real-estate boom and filling its treasury. Street names were changed from Spanish to English. Further surveys and street plans quickly replaced the original plan for the pueblo with a new civic center south of the Plaza and a new use of space.
The fragmentation of Los Angeles real estate on the Anglo-Mexican axis had begun. Under the Spanish system, the residences of the power-elite clustered around the Plaza in the center of town. In the new American system, the power elite would reside in the outskirts. The emerging minorities, including the Chinese, Italians, French, and Russians, joined with the Mexicans near the Plaza.
first brought thousands of miners from Sonora northern Mexico on the way to the gold fields. So many of them settled in the area north of the Plaza that it came to be known as Sonoratown.
During the Gold Rush years in northern California, Los Angeles became known as the “Queen of the Cow Counties” for its role in supplying beef and other foodstuffs to hungry miners in the north. Among the cow counties, Los Angeles County had the largest herds in the state followed closely by Santa Barbara and Monterey Counties.
With the temporary absence of a legal system, the city was quickly submerged in lawlessness. Many of the New York regiment disbanded at the end of the war and charged with maintaining order were thugs and brawlers. They roamed the streets joined by gamblers, outlaws, and prostitutes driven out of San Francisco and mining towns of the north by Vigilance Committees or lynch mobs
. Los Angeles came to be known as the "toughest and most lawless city west of Santa Fe."
Some of the residents resisted the new Anglo powers by resorting to social banditry against the gringo
s. In 1856, Juan Flores
threatened Southern California
with a full-scale revolt. He was hanged
in Los Angeles in front of 3,000 spectators. Tiburcio Vasquez
, a legend in his own time among the Mexican-born population for his daring feats against the Anglos, was captured in present-day Santa Clarita, California
on May 14, 1874. He was found guilty of two counts of murder by a San Jose
jury in 1874, and was hanged there in 1875.
Los Angeles had several active Vigilance Committees during that era. Between 1850 and 1870, mobs carried out approximately 35 lynchings of Mexicans—more than four times the number that occurred in San Francisco. Los Angeles was described as “undoubtedly the toughest town of the entire nation.” The homicide rate between 1847 and 1870 averaged 158 per 100,000 (13 murders per year), which was 10 to 20 times the annual murder rates for New York City during the same period.
The fear of Mexican violence and the racially motivated violence inflicted on them further marginalized the Mexicans, greatly reducing their economic and political opportunities.
John Gately Downey, the seventh Governor of California was sworn into office on January 14, 1860, thereby becoming the first Governor from Southern California. Governor Downey was born and raised in Castlesampson, County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Los Angeles in 1850. He was responsible for keeping California in the Union during the Civil War.
Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city on April 4, 1850. Five months later, California was admitted into the Union. Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo required the U.S. to grant citizenship to the Indians of former Mexican territories, the U.S. did not get around to doing that for another 80 years. The Constitution of California deprived Indians of any protection under the law, considering them as non-persons. As a result, it was impossible to bring an Anglo to trial for killing an Indian or forcing them off their property. Anglos concluded that the "quickest and best way to get rid of (their) troublesome presence was to kill them off, (and) this procedure was adopted as a standard for many years."
When New England author and Indian-rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson
toured the Indian villages of Southern California in 1883, she was appalled by the racism of the Anglos living there. She found they treated Indians worse than animals, hunted them for sport, robbed them of their farmlands, and brought them to the edge of extermination. While Indians were depicted by whites as lazy and shiftless, she found most of them to be hard-working craftsmen and farmers. Jackson's tour inspired her to write her 1884 novel, Ramona
, which she hoped would give a human face to the atrocities and indignities suffered by the Indians in California. And it did. The novel was enormously successful, inspiring four movies and a yearly pageant in Hemet, California. Many of the Indian villages of Southern California survived because of her efforts, including Morongo, Cahuilla
, Soboba, Temecula, Pechanga, and Warner Hot Springs.
Remarkably, the Gabrielino Indians, now called Tongva, also survived. in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that there were 2,000 of them still living in Southern California. Some were organizing to protect burial and cultural sites. Others were trying to win federal recognition as a tribe to operate a casino.
and Isaias W. Hellman
.
After the transcontinental railroad was completed, the Chinese sought jobs in the burgeoning California cities, where they faced massive discrimination on the part of organized labor. As a result, they filled in where there was less competition, running laundries, restaurants, and vegetable stands.
In a time of great exploitation and monopoly by the railroad barons, the unions blamed Chinese for lowering the wages and living standards of Anglo workers. The newspapers of both Los Angeles and San Francisco were filled with anti-Chinese propaganda.
The thriving Chinatown, on the eastern edge of the Plaza, was the site of terrible violence on October 24, 1871. A gunfight between rival Chinese factions over the abduction of a woman resulted in the accidental death of a white man. This enraged the bystanders, and a mob
of about 500 Anglos and Latinos descended on Chinatown. They randomly lynched 19 Chinese men and boys, only one of whom may have been involved in the original killing. Homes and businesses were looted. Only ten rioters were tried. Eight were convicted of manslaughter, but their convictions were overturned the following year on a legal technicality. This was later referred to as the Chinese Massacre of 1871
.
The massacre was the first time that Los Angeles was reported on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, even crowding out reports of the terrible Chicago fire that had taken place two weeks earlier. While the racist Los Angeles Star went so far to call the massacre "a glorious victory," others fretted about the city's racist and violent image. With the coming economic opportunities of the railroads, city fathers set themselves to wipe out mob violence.
Their efforts, however, led to more restrictive measures against the Chinese. In 1878–79, the City Council passed several measures adversely affecting Chinese vegetable merchants. The merchants went on strike. Los Angeles went without vegetables for several weeks, finally bringing the city to the bargaining table. Historian William Estrada wrote: "This little-known event may have helped the Chinese to better understand their role in the community as well as the power of organization as a means for community self-defense. The strike was a sign that Los Angeles was undergoing dramatic social, economic, and technological change and that the Chinese were a part of that change."
The first railroad, San Pedro Railroad, was inaugurated in October, 1869 by John G. Downey
and Phineas Banning
. It ran 21 miles (33.8 km) between San Pedro and Los Angeles.
The town continued to grow at a moderate pace until its connection with the Central Pacific
and San Francisco in 1876, and more directly with the East by the Santa Fe system
(through its subsidiary California Southern Railroad
) in 1885.
The Central Pacific Railroad had a significant impact in the immediate growth of the City of Los Angeles. The Central Pacific Railroad owners could have chosen San Diego over Los Angeles to be their final freight destination but the owners and the City of San Francisco feared that San Diego would become a rival importing power with its large natural bay. Instead, Central Pacific picked Los Angeles to be their southern hub and prompted the rapid expansion of the city's economic growth and expansion. The completion of the latter line precipitated one of the most extraordinary of American railway wars and land booms, which resulted in giving southern California a great stimulus.
Phineas Banning excavated a channel out of the mud flats of San Pedro Bay
leading to Wilmington
in 1871. Banning had already laid track and shipped in locomotives to connect the port to the city. Harrison Gray Otis, founder and owner of the Los Angeles Times
, and a number of business colleagues embarked on reshaping southern California by expanding that into a harbor
at San Pedro using federal dollars.
This put them at loggerheads with Collis P. Huntington
, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and one of California's "Big Four" investors in the Central Pacific
and Southern Pacific
. (The "Big Four" are sometimes numbered among the "robber baron
s" of the Gilded Age
). The line reached Los Angeles in 1876 and Huntington directed it to a port at Santa Monica
, where the Long Wharf was built.
April 1872, John G. Downey went to San Francisco and was successful in representing Los Angeles in discussions with Collis Huntington concerning Los Angeles’s efforts to bring the Southern Pacific Railroad through Los Angeles.
The San Pedro forces eventually prevailed (though it required Banning and Downey to turn their railroad over to the Southern Pacific). Work on the San Pedro breakwater began in 1899 and was finished in 1910. Otis Chandler and his allies secured a change in state law in 1909 that allowed Los Angeles to absorb San Pedro and Wilmington, using a long, narrow corridor of land to connect them with the rest of the city. The debacle of the future Los Angeles harbor was termed the Free Harbor Fight
.
In 1898, Henry Huntington purchased the Los Angeles Railway
(the 'yellow cars') and two years later founded the Pacific Electric Railway
(the 'red cars'). Los Angeles Railway served the city and the Pacific Electric Railway served the rest of the county. At its peak, the Pacific Electric was the largest electrically operated interurban railway in the world. Over 1000 miles (1,609.3 km) of tracks connected Los Angeles with Hollywood, Pasadena, San Pedro, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Pomona, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, and other points and was recognized as best public transportation system in the world.
was discovered by Edward L. Doheny
in 1892, near the present location of Dodger Stadium
. The Los Angeles City Oil Field
was the first of many fields in the basin to be exploited, and in 1900 and 1902, respectively, the Beverly Hills Oil Field
and Salt Lake Oil Field
were discovered just a few miles west of the original find. Los Angeles became a center of oil production in the early 20th century, and by 1923 the region was producing one-quarter of the world's total supply; it is still a significant producer, with the Wilmington Oil Field
having the fourth-largest reserves of any field in California.
and Ricardo Flores Magón
and his brother Enrique of the Partido Liberal Mexicano. They were later joined by the socialist candidate for mayor Job Harriman
, Chinese revolutionaries, the novelist Upton Sinclair
, "Wobblies" (members of the Industrial Workers of the World
, the IWW), and Socialist and Communist labor organizers such as the Japanese-American Karl Yoneda
and the Russian-born New Yorker Meyer Baylin. The Socialists were the first to set up a soapbox in the Plaza, which would serve as the location of union rallies and protests and riots as the police attempted to break up meetings.
town. Fruit growers and local merchants who had opposed the Pullman strike
in 1894 subsequently formed the Merchants and Manufacturers Association (M & M) to support the L.A. Times anti-union campaign.
The California labor movement, with its strength concentrated in San Francisco, had largely ignored Los Angeles for years. It changed, in 1907, however, when the American Federation of Labor
decided to challenge the open shop of "Otis Town."
In 1909, the city fathers placed a ban on free speech from public streets and private property except for the Plaza. Locals had claimed that it had been an Open Forum forever. The area was of particular concern to the owners of the L.A. Times, Harrison Grey Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler.
At the turn of the century, Otis and Chandler as part of a syndicate had acquired thousands of acres of farmland in Baja California that stretched across the border into Imperial County. It was called the California-Mexican Land and Cattle Company, or the C-M Ranch.
In exchange for favorable reports about the presidency of Porfirio Diaz
in Mexico, Otis and his associates enjoyed unfettered business freedom in Baja California. Under Diaz,
American capitalists bought millions of acres of Mexican land, mines, factories, banks, oil rights (Doheny), public utilities, and most of the nation's railroads. The Diaz regime was marked with increasing poverty, violent political repression, and the support of President Wilson.
The Otis-Chandler plans for both their Mexican holdings and the city required a steady supply of cheap labor and keeping the unions from succeeding as they had done in San Francisco.
In 1910, the century's first full-scale revolution took place in Baja California, led by two factions, wealthy landowner Francisco Madero and the Partido Liberal
Mexicano (PLM). The PLM was based in the L.A. Plaza and led by anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón, a talented journalist and charismatic speaker who occupies a special place in the
story of Los Angeles. He is the prototype of the 20th-century Mexican-American political and social activist.
Publishing the popular bi-lingual Regeneracion newspaper in Los Angeles, Magon's movement posed a direct challenge to Otis and Chandler's hold on the border
region. The paper not only reported on the revolution in Mexico, but also social and political conditions in the U.S. It examined the U.S. penal system, the
plight of agricultural workers, child labor, Margaret Sanger's crusade for women, and most of all the battle against the open shop in Los Angeles. The
paper also connected readers with the social services and cultural happenings available in the expanding Plaza area.
Magon wrote: "We do not struggle for abstractions, but for materialities. We want land for all, bread for all. Inevitably blood must run, so that conquests obtain benefits for all and not for a specific social class."
The insurgents of the Baja Revolution consisted of no more than 200 anarchists,
socialists, and Wobblies. Their basic goal was the redistribution back to Mexican peasants of Baja California land, of which 78
percent was owned by foreign interests.
The owners of the Times drew the conclusion that the Mexican rebels and union organizers in L.A. were connected. This conflict came to a head with the bombing of the Times in 1910, which killed 10 people, and injured 17. Two months later, the Llewellyin Iron Works near the plaza was bombed. A meeting was hastily called of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers Association. The L.A. Times wrote: "radical and practical matters (were) considered, and steps taken for the adaption of such as are adequate to cope with a situation tardily recognized as the gravest that Los Angeles has ever been called upon to face."
The authorities indicted John and James McNamara, both associated with the Iron Workers Union, for the bombing; Clarence Darrow
, who had successfully defended Big Bill Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone in Idaho, represented them.
At the same time the McNamara brothers were awaiting trial, Los Angeles was preparing for a city election. Job Harriman, running on the socialist ticket, was challenging the establishment's candidate.
Harriman's campaign, however, was tied to the asserted innocence of the McNamaras. But the defense was in trouble: the prosecution not only had evidence of the McNamaras' complicity, but had trapped Darrow in a clumsy attempt to bribe one of the jurors. On December 1, 1911, four days before the final election, the McNamaras entered a plea of guilty in return for prison terms. The L.A. Times accompanied its report of the guilty plea with a faked photograph of Samuel Gompers
trampling an American flag
. Harriman lost badly.
The Otis-Chandler interests were further challenged when Madero became President of Mexico in 1911. Commercial interests in L.A. felt radical measures had to be
taken. Mexican and labor organizers were scapegoated.
In June 1911, the police raided the offices of Regeneracion. Magon and his younger brother Enrique were arrested with two others and charged with conspiracy to lead an armed expedition against a "friendly nation." The trial was a great media event and drew great crowds. Among those who showed up to speak on behalf of the brothers were socialist labor organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, American anarchist Emma Goldman, and Eugene V. Debs
.
The four were convicted and sentenced to 23 months at the federal prison in Macneil Island, Washington.
On Christmas Day, 1913, police attempted to break up an IWW rally of 500 taking place in the Plaza. Encountering resistance, the police waded into the crowd attacking them with their clubs. One citizen was killed. In the aftermath, the authorities attempted to impose martial law in the wake of growing protests.
Seventy-three people were arrested in connection with the riots. The City Council introduced new measures to control public speaking. The Times scapegoated all foreign elements even calling onlookers and taco venders as "cultural subversives."
In 1916, the Magón brothers were arrested on charges of defamation and sending indecent materials through the mail. Ricardo was able to get released on bail. He gave a rousing speech at Italian Hall to 700 of the International Workers Defense League. He called Mexican President Carranza a "lackey of President Wilson" and Wilson "the bandit of Wall Street." The speech was given wide circulation in the press throughout the Southwest and in Mexico.
Ricardo was convicted and sent to Leavenworth. In 1922, he died in his cell, maybe murdered by a guard. His body was returned by train to Mexico City, where he was given a hero's welcome by a crowd of thousands consisting of workers, labor organizers, and government officials singing La Marsellaise and the Internationale.
The open shop campaign continued from strength to strength, although not without meeting opposition from workers. By 1923, the Industrial Workers of the World
had made considerable progress in organizing the longshoremen in San Pedro and led approximately 3,000 men to walk off the job. With the support of the L.A. Times, a special "Red Squad" was formed within the Los Angeles Police Department
and arrested so many strikers that the city's jails were soon filled.
Some 1,200 dock workers were corralled in a special stockade in Griffith Park
. The L.A. Times wrote approvingly that "stockades and forced labor were a good remedy for IWW terrorism." Public meetings were outlawed in San Pedro, Upton Sinclair
was arrested at Liberty Hill in San Pedro for reading the United States Bill of Rights
on the private property of a strike supporter (the arresting officer told him "we'll have none of 'that Constitution stuff'") and blanket arrests were made at union gatherings. The strike ended after members of the Ku Klux Klan
and the American Legion
raided the IWW Hall and attacked the men, women and children meeting there. The strike was defeated.
Los Angeles developed another industry in the early 20th century when movie producers from the East Coast relocated there. These new employers were likewise afraid of unions and other social movements: during Upton Sinclair
's campaign for Governor of California
under the banner of his "End Poverty In California" (EPIC) movement, Louis B. Mayer
turned MGM's Culver City
studio into the unofficial headquarters of the organized campaign against EPIC. MGM produced fake newsreel
interviews with whiskered actors with Russian
accents voicing their enthusiasm for EPIC, along with footage focusing on central casting
hobo
s huddled on the borders of California waiting to enter and live off the bounty of its taxpayers once Sinclair was elected. Sinclair lost.
Los Angeles also acquired another industry in the years just before World War II
: the garment industry. At first devoted to regional merchandise such as sportswear, the industry eventually grew to be the second largest center of garment production in the United States.
Unions began to make progress in organizing these workers as the New Deal
arrived in the 1930s. They made even greater gains in the war years, as Los Angeles grew even further.
Today, the ethnic makeup of the city and the politically progressive views of surrounding West Hollywood and Hollywood have made Los Angeles a strong union town. However, many garment workers in central LA, most of whom are Mexican
immigrants, still work in sweat shop conditions.
flowed clear and fresh all year, supporting 45 Gabrielino villages in the area. The source of the river was the aquifer
under the San Fernando Valley
, supplied with water from the surrounding mountains. The rising of the underground bedrock at the Glendale Narrows (near today's Griffith Park
) squeezed the water to the surface at that point. Then, through much of the year, the river emerged from the valley to flow across the floodplain 20 miles (32.2 km) to the sea. The area also provided other streams, lakes, and artesian wells.
Early settlers were more than a little discouraged by the region's diverse and unpredictable weather. They watched helplessly as long droughts weakened and starved their livestock, only to be drowned and carried off by ferocious storms. During the years of little rain, people would build too close to the riverbed, only to see their homes and barns later swept out to sea during a flood. The location of the Los Angeles Plaza had to be moved twice because of previously having been built too close to the riverbed.
Worse, floods would change the river's course. When the settlers arrived, the river joined Ballona Creek
to discharge in Santa Monica Bay
. A fierce storm in 1835 diverted its course to Long Beach, where it stays today.
Early citizens could not even maintain a footbridge over the river from one side of the city to the other. After the American takeover, the city council authorized spending of $20,000 for a contractor to build a substantial wooden bridge across the river. The first storm to come along dislodged the bridge, used it as a battering ram to break through the embankment, and scattered its timbers all the way to the sea.
Some of the most concentrated rainfall in the history of the United States has occurred in the San Gabriel Mountains
north of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. On April 5, 1926, a rain gauge in the San Gabriels collected one inch in one minute. In January, 1969, more water fell on the San Gabriels in nine days than New York City sees in a year. In February 1978, almost a foot of rain fell in 24 hours, and, in one blast, an inch and a half in five minutes. This storm caused massive debris flow
s throughout the region, one of them unearthing the corpses in the Verdugo Hills Cemetery and depositing them in the town below. Another wiped out the small town of Hidden Springs in a tributary of the Big Tujunga River, killing 13 people.
The greatest daily rainfall recorded in California was 26.12 inches on January 23, 1943 at Hoegees near Mt. Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains. Fifteen other stations reported over 20 inches in two days from the same storm. Forty-five others reported 70 percent of the average annual rainfall in two days.
Quibbling between city and county governments delayed any response to the flooding until a massive storm in 1938 flooded Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The federal government stepped in. To transfer floodwater to the sea as quickly as possible, the Army Corps of Engineers paved the beds of the river and its tributaries. The Corps also built several dams and catchment basins
in the canyons along the San Gabriel Mountains to reduce the debris flows. It was an enormous project, taking years to complete.
Today, the Los Angeles River functions mainly as a flood control. A drop of rain falling in the San Gabriel Mountains will reach the sea faster than an auto can drive. During today's rainstorms, the volume of the Los Angeles River at Long Beach can be as large as the Mississippi River
at St. Louis.
The drilling of wells and pumping of water from the San Fernando Valley aquifer dried up the river by the 1920s. By 1980, the aquifer was supplying drinking water for 800,000 people. In that year, it was discovered that the aquifer had been contaminated. Many wells were shut down, as the area qualified as a Superfund site
Legitimate concerns about water supply were exploited to gain backing for a huge engineering and legal effort to bring more water to the city and allow more development. The city fathers had their eyes on the Owens River
, about 250 miles (400 km) northeast of Los Angeles in Inyo County
, near the Nevada
state line. It was a permanent stream of fresh water fed by the melted snows of the eastern Sierra Nevada. It flowed through the Owens River Valley before emptying into the shallow, saline Owens Lake
, where it evaporated.
Sometime between 1899 and 1903, Harrison Gray Otis and his son-in-law successor, Harry Chandler
, engaged in successful efforts at buying up cheap land on the northern outskirts of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley
. At the same time, they enlisted the help of William Mulholland
, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Water Department (later the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
or LADWP), and J.B. Lippencott, of the United States Reclamation Service.
Lippencott performed water surveys in the Owens Valley for the Service while secretly receiving a salary from the City of Los Angeles. He succeeded in persuading Owens Valley farmers and mutual water companies to pool their interests and surrender the water rights to 200,000 acres (800 km²) of land to Fred Eaton
, Lippencott's agent and a former mayor of Los Angeles. Lippencott then resigned from the Reclamation Service, took a job with the Los Angeles Water Department as assistant to Mulholland, and turned over the Reclamation Service maps, field surveys and stream measurements to the city. Those studies served as the basis for designing the longest aqueduct
in the world.
By July 1905, the Times began to warn the voters of Los Angeles that the county would soon dry up unless they voted bonds
for building the aqueduct. Artificial drought conditions were created when water was run into the sewers to decrease the supply in the reservoirs and residents were forbidden to water their lawns and gardens.
On election day, the people of Los Angeles voted for $22.5 million worth of bonds to build an aqueduct from the Owens River and to defray other expenses of the project. With this money, and with a special Act of Congress allowing cities to own property outside their boundaries, the City acquired the land that Eaton had acquired from the Owens Valley farmers and started to build the aqueduct. On the occasion of the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct
on November 5, 1913 Mullholland's entire speech was five words: "There it is. Take it."
because of her race but had to travel 3.6 miles to the "negro swimming pool" at 1357 East 22nd street. Other city pools were opened to Negroes but closed to whites one day a week. The City Council, by a vote of 6 to 6 on one occasion and 8 to 6 a week later refused to have the city attorney appeal the case.
Summer Olympics Los Angeles hosted the 1932 Summer Olympics
. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
, which had opened in May, 1932 with a seating capacity of 76,000, was enlarged to accommodate over 100,000 spectators for Olympic events. It is still in use by the USC
Trojans football team. Olympic Boulevard, a major thoroughfare, honors the occasion.
Griffith Park fire A devastating brush fire on October 3, 1933, killed 29 and injured another 150 workers who were clearing brush in Griffith Park
.
in and closely around the area now known as Downtown
. The first large additions to the city were the districts of Highland Park
and Garvanza
to the north, and the South Los Angeles
area. In 1906, the approval of the Port of Los Angeles and a change in state law allowed the city to annex the Shoestring, or Harbor Gateway, a narrow and crooked strip of land leading from Los Angeles south towards the port. The port cities of San Pedro and Wilmington were added in 1909 and the city of Hollywood was added in 1910, bringing the city up to 90 square miles (233 km²) and giving it a vertical "barbell" shape. Also added that year was Colegrove, a suburb west northwest of the city near Hollywood; Cahuenga
, a township northwest of the former city limits; and a part of Los Feliz
were annexed to the city.
The opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct provided the city with four times as much water as it required, and the offer of water service became a powerful lure for neighboring communities. The city, saddled with a large bond and excess water, locked in customers through annexation by refusing to supply other communities. Harry Chandler, a major investor in San Fernando Valley
real estate, used his Los Angeles Times to promote development near the aqueduct's outlet. By referendum
of the residents, 170 square miles (440 km²) of the San Fernando Valley, along with the Palms district, were added to the city in 1915, almost tripling its area, mostly towards the northwest. Over the next seventeen years dozens of additional annexations brought the city's area to 450 square miles (1,165 km²) in 1932. (Numerous small annexations brought the total area of the city up to 469 square miles (1,215 km²) as of 2004.)
Most of the annexed communities were unincorporated towns but ten incorporated cities were consolidated into Los Angeles: Wilmington
(1909), San Pedro
(1909), Hollywood
(1910), Sawtelle
(1922), Hyde Park
(1923), Eagle Rock
(1923), Venice
(1925), Watts
(1926), Barnes City (1927), and Tujunga (1932).
near the Los Angeles Plaza. She became very dedicated to the preservation of the area and developed the idea of creating a tourist site with a romantic theme of Old Mexico.
Her efforts finally won the attention of Harry Chandler
of the Los Angeles Times who staged a $1000-a-plate luncheon on her behalf. Chandler also set up a for-profit business, the Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, with himself and Sterling in charge.
Chandler's interest in developing the idealized Mexican marketplace was twofold: 1. It would give him a way to control the level of free-speech activities on the Plaza and 2. it would present an image of "good Mexicans" who did not include union organizers and angry workers protesting their exploitation. Ceramic figures of a Mexican sleeping at the foot of a cactus with a sombrero over his head would symbolize the stereotype Chandler wanted to project.
Sterling and Chandler's efforts finally paid off with the opening of Olvera Street
in 1930. Sterling spent the rest of her life managing the tourist attraction as a profitable business.
(LAPD)—and the fight against it—were dominant themes in the city's story from early 20th-century to the 1950s.
In the 1920s, for example, it was common practice for the city's mayor, councilmen, and attorneys to take contributions from madams, bootleggers, and gamblers. The top aide of the mayor was involved with a protection racket. Thugs with eastern-Mafia connections were involved in often violent conflicts over bootlegging and horse-racing turf. The mayor's brother was selling jobs in the LAPD.
In 1933, the new mayor Frank Shaw
started giving out contracts without competitive bids and paying city employees to favor crony contractors. The city's Vice Squad functioned city-wide as the enforcer and collector of the city's organized crime, with revenues going to the pockets of city officials right up to the mayor.
In 1937, the owner of downtown's Clifton's Cafeteria
, Clifford Clinton led a citizen's campaign to clean up city hall. He and other reformers served on a Grand Jury investigating the charges of corruption. In a minority report, the reformers wrote:
The police Intelligence Squad spied on anyone even suspected of criticizing the police. They included journalist Carey Williams, the district attorney, Judge Bowron, and two of the County Supervisors.
The persistent courage of Clinton, Superior Court Judge, later Mayor, Fletcher Bowron
, and former L.A.P.D. detective Harry Raymond
turned the tide. The police became so nervous that the Intelligence Squad blew up Raymond's car and nearly killed him. The public was so enraged by the bombing that it quickly voted Shaw out of office, one of the first big-city recalls in the country's history. The head of the intelligence squad was convicted and sentenced to two years to life. Police Chief James Davis and 23 other officers were forced to resign.
Fletcher Bowron replaced Shaw as mayor in 1938 to preside over one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the city. His Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival would bring major changes to the government of Los Angeles.
In 1950, he appointed William H. Parker was sworn in as Chief of Police. Parker pushed for more independence from political pressures that would enable him to create a more professionalized police force. The public supported him and voted in charter changes that isolated the police department from the rest of government.
Through the 1960s, the LAPD was promoted as one of the most efficient departments in the world. But Parker's administration would be increasingly charged with police brutality
—resulting from his recruiting of officers from the South with strong anti-black and anti-Mexican attitudes.
Reaction to police brutality resulted in the Watts riots
of 1965 and again, after the Rodney King
beating, in the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Charges of police brutality dogged the Department through the end of the century. In the late 1990s, as a result of the Rampart scandal
involving misconduct of 70 officers, the federal government was forced to intervene and assumed jurisdiction of the Department with a consent decree
. Police reform has since been a major issue confronted by L.A.'s recent mayors.
Social critic Mike Davis has recently argued that attempts to "revitalize" downtown Los Angeles decreases public space and further alienates poor and minority populations. This enforced geographical separation of diverse populations goes back to the city's earliest days.
, Los Angeles grew as a center for production of aircraft, war supplies and ammunitions. Thousands of African American
s and European American
s from the South
and the Midwest
migrated to the West
to fill factory jobs.
By 1950, Los Angeles was an industrial and financial giant created by war production and migration. Los Angeles assembled more cars than any city other than Detroit
, made more tires than any city but Akron
, made more furniture than Grand Rapids
, and stitched more clothes than any city except New York. In addition, it was the national capital for the production of motion pictures
, radio
programs and, within a few years, television
shows. Construction boomed as tract houses were built in ever expanding suburban communities financed by the largess of the Federal Housing Administration
.
Los Angeles continued to spread out, particularly with the development of the San Fernando Valley and the building of the freeways launched in the 1940s. When the local street car system went out of business, Los Angeles became a city built around the automobile, with all the social, health and political problems that this dependence produces.
The famed urban sprawl
of Los Angeles became a notable feature of the town, and the pace of the growth accelerated in the first decades of the 20th century. The San Fernando Valley
, sometimes called "America's Suburb
", became a favorite site of developers, and the city began growing past its roots downtown
toward the ocean
and towards the east.
This is also the time when General Motors persuaded most urban regions in North America to shut down their light rail street car systems and replace them for more flexible, but polluting and inefficient, bus systems. This drastically changed growth and travel patterns in the city in subsequent years and contributed to the severe air pollution events that Los Angeles became famous for.
, Brentwood
, and Topanga Canyon
neighborhoods. Most of the homes destroyed had wooden shake roofs, which not only led to their own loss but also sent firebrands up to three miles (5 km) away. Despite this, few changes were made to the building codes to prevent future losses.
The repeal of a law limiting building height and the controversial redevelopment of Bunker Hill, which destroyed a picturesque though decrepit neighborhood, ushered in the construction of a new generation of skyscrapers. Bunker Hill's 62-floor First Interstate Building (later named Aon Center
) was the highest in Los Angeles when it was completed in 1973. It was surpassed by the Library Tower (now called the U.S. Bank Tower
) a few blocks to the north in 1990, a 310 m (1,018 ft) building that is the tallest west of the Mississippi. Outside of Downtown, the Wilshire Corridor is lined with tall buildings, particularly near Westwood. Century City, developed on the former 20th Century Fox
back lot, has become another center of high-rise construction on the Westside.
During the latter decades of the 20th century, the city saw a massive increase of street gangs. At the same time, crack cocaine
became widely available and dominated by gangs in the 1980s. Although gangs were disproportionately confined to lower-income inner-city sections, fear knew no boundaries citywide. Since the early 1990s, the city saw a decrease in crime and gang violence with rising prices in housing
, revitalization
, urban development, and heavy police vigilance in many parts of the city. With its reputation, it had led to Los Angeles being referred as "The Gang Capital of America".
A subway
system, developed and built through the 1980s as a major goal of mayor Tom Bradley
, stretches from North Hollywood to Union Station and connects to light rail
lines that extend to the neighboring cities of Long Beach
, Norwalk
, and Pasadena
, among others. Also, a commuter rail system, Metrolink
, has been added that stretches from nearby Ventura
and Simi Valley
to San Bernardino
, Orange County
, and Riverside
. The funding of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
project is funded by a half cent tax increase added in the mid 1980s, which yields $400 million every month. Although the regional transit system is growing, subway expansion was halted in the 1990s over methane gas concerns, political conflict, and construction and financing problems during Red Line Subway project, which culminated in a massive sinkhole on Hollywood Boulevard
. As a result, the original subway plans have been delayed for decades as light rail
systems, dedicated busways, and limited-stop "Rapid" bus routes have become the preferred means of mass transit in LA's expanding series of gridlocked, congested corridors.
The 1995 murder of Stephanie Kuhen
in Los Angeles led to condemnation from President Bill Clinton
and a crackdown on Los Angeles-area gangs.
. More and more, they found themselves excluded from the suburbs and restricted to housing in East or South Los Angeles, Watts, and Compton
. Such real-estate practices severely restricted educational and economic opportunities.
Historian Peter Radkowski wrote:
In 1955, William Byron Rumford
, the first black from Northern California to serve in the California State Legislature, introduced a fair-housing bill. In 1959, the California Legislature passed the California Fair Employment Practices Act sponsored by Augustus Hawkins of Los Angeles. That same year, the state's Unruh Civil Rights Act
addressed fair housing but did not have any teeth. The aggrieved party had to sue to get compensation.
In 1963, California Legislature passed and Governor Pat Brown signed the Rumford Fair Housing Act which outlawed restrictive covenants and the refusal to rent or sell housing on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, or physical disability.
In reaction to the Rumford Act, a well-funded coalition of realtors and landlords immediately began to campaign for a referendum
that would amend the state Constitution to protect property owners' ability to deny minorities equal access to housing. Known as Proposition 14, it caused a storm of deep and bitter controversy across the state. Radkowski wrote:
While conservatives such as Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles argued that blacks are "better off in Los Angeles than anywhere else," blacks knew that they were kept out of participating in the city's prosperity. On May 26, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told a crowd of 35,000 at Wrigley Field, "We want to be free whether we're in Birmingham or in Los Angeles."
In November, 1964, California voters passed Proposition 14 by a wide margin.
In August, 1965, the Watts Riots
broke out. Lasting six days, it left 32 dead, 1,032 injured, 3,952 arrested, $40 million in damage, and 1,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. According to later reports, the riot was a reaction to a long record of police brutality by the LAPD and other injustices suffered by blacks, including discrimination in jobs, housing, and education.
In 1966, the California State Supreme Court, in Mulkey v. Reitman, ruled that Proposition 14 violated the State Constitution's provisions for equal protection and due process.
In 1967, in Reitman v. Mulkey, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the decision of the California Supreme Court and ruled that Proposition 14 had violated the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964
also addressed the issue, but made few provisions for enforcement.
The U.S. Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) introduced meaningful federal enforcement mechanisms.
and other low-wage nations. Aerospace production has dropped significantly since the end of the Cold War
or moved to states with better tax conditions, and the entertainment industry has found cheaper areas to produce films, television programs and commercials elsewhere in the United States and Canada. However, many studios still operate in Los Angeles, such as CBS Television City
at the corner of Fairfax Avenue
and Beverly Boulevard
and 20th Century Fox
in Century City.
Those macroeconomic changes have brought major social changes with them. While unemployment dropped in Los Angeles in the 1990s, the newly created jobs tended to be low-wage jobs filled by recent immigrants and other exploitable populations; by one calculation, the number of poor families increased from 36% to 43% of the population of Los Angeles County during this time. At the same time, the number of immigrants from Mexico, Central America and Latin America has made Los Angeles a "majority minority" city that will soon be majority Latino. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.9% to 6.8% in 2002, and is around 11.6% currently.
The desire for residential housing in the downtown area has been noticed, and several historical buildings have been renovated as condos (while maintaining the original outside design), and many new apartment and condominium towers and complexes are being built.
Since the 1980s, there's been an increasing gap between the rich
and the poor
, making Los Angeles the most socioeconomically divided city in the United States.
On November 10, 2004, the Los Angeles Daily News reported plans to turn the northeast San Fernando Valley into an industrial powerhouse, which would provide new and more jobs.
, American-born, and Protestant until the late 20th Century. South L.A. was mostly white until the 1950s, but then became predominantly black until the 1990s, and is now mostly Latino
. While the Latino community within the City of Los Angeles was once centered on the Eastside
, it now extends throughout the city. The San Fernando Valley, which represented a bastion of white flight
in the 1960s and provided the votes that allowed Sam Yorty to defeat the first election run by Tom Bradley
, is now as ethnically diverse
as the rest of the city on the other side of the Hollywood Hills
.
By the end of the 20th century, some of the annexed areas began to feel cut off from the political process of the megalopolis, leading to a particularly strong secession movement in the San Fernando Valley and weaker ones in San Pedro and Hollywood. The referendums to split the city were rejected by voters in November 2002.
2010 3,792,621
Sources: Historical Population Data of California; Historical Resident Population of Los Angeles during the Spanish & Mexican Period, 1781 to 1840
in the nation, with more than 36 percent of the city's African-American residents owning their own homes. Black leader W. E. B. Du Bois described L.A. in 1913 as a "wonderful place" since they were less subjected to racial discrimination due to their population being small and the ongoing tensions between Anglos and Mexicans. That changed in the 1920s when restrictive covenants that enforced segregation became widespread. Blacks were mostly confined along the South Central corridor, Watts, and small enclaves in Venice and Pacoima, which received far fewer services than other areas of the city.
After WWII, the city's black population grew in substantial numbers
as many continued to flee from the South for better opportunities although they remained in segregated enclaves. Even after the Supreme Court banned the legal enforcement of race-oriented restrictive covenants in the Shelley v. Kraemer
case (1948), black homeownership declined severely although the population continued to increase. The city had 63,774 blacks in 1940 and by 1950, they were approximately 170,000 of the population. By 1960, Los Angeles had the fifth largest black population in the United States, larger than any city in the South.
The Watts riots
of 1965 followed a minor traffic incident and lasted four days after decades of police mistreatment and other racial injustices toward blacks. Thirty-four people were killed and 1,034 injured at a cost of $40 million in property damage and looting. So many businesses burned on 103rd Street that it became known as "Charcoal Alley."
The City did help take a few steps to deal with the lack of social services for the black community, but black unemployment was relatively high following de-industrialization that closed all of the high-paying industrial jobs that opened up to black and Latino workers. Things got worse following the Watts riot – gang warfare and the drug trade reached crisis levels by the 1980s which were disproportionately high in minority communities.
By 1990, the LAPD, which had followed a para-militaristic model since Chief Parker's regime in the 1950s, became more alienated from minority communities following accusations of racial profiling. In 1992, a jury in suburban Simi Valley
acquitted white Los Angeles police officers involved in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King
, the year before. After four days of rioting
, more than fifty deaths, and billions of dollars of property losses, mostly in the Central City, the National Guard and the police finally regained control.
Since the 1980s, more middle-class black families have left the central core of Los Angeles to settle in other California municipalities or out of state
. In 1970, blacks made up 18 percent of the city's population. That percentage has dropped to 10 percent in 2010 as many continue to leave to settle elsewhere. Los Angeles still has the largest black population of any city in the Western United States.
forces throughout the country.
A steady migration of Mexicans to California from 1910 to 1930 expanded the Mexican and Latino population in Los Angeles to 97,116 or 7.8%. In 1930, a large repatriation of 400–500,000 Mexican immigrants and their children began after the onset of the Depression, massive unempoyment, encouragement by the government of Mexico, the threat of deportation and welfare agencies willing to pay for the tickets of those leaving (some 2 million European immigrants left as well).
At the same time, the city celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1931 with a grand "fiesta de Los Angeles" featuring a blond "reina" in historic ranchera costume. By 1940 the Latino population dropped to 7.1%, but remained at sightly over 100,000.
During World War II, hostility toward Mexican-Americans took a different form, as local newspapers portrayed Chicano youths, who sometimes called themselves "pachucos" as barely civilized gangsters. Anglo servicemen attacked young Chicanos dressed in the pachuco uniform of the day: long coats with wide shoulders and pleated, high-waisted, pegged pants, or zoot suit
s.
In 1943, twenty-two young Chicanos were convicted of a murder of another youth at a party held at a swimming hole southeast of Los Angeles known as the "sleepy lagoon" on a warm night in August 1942; they were eventually freed after an appeal that demonstrated both their innocence and the racism of the judge conducting the trial. Today, the event is known as the Zoot Suit Riots
.
In the 1990s, redistricting led to the election of Latino members of the City Council and the first Latino members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors since its inception. In 1994, California Voters passed Proposition 187, which denied undocumented immigrants and their families in California welfare, health benefits, and education.
With the growth of the Latino community, primarily immigration from Mexico
, but also from Central America
and South America
, it is now the largest ethnic bloc in Los Angeles. By 1998, Latinos outnumbered Anglos in the city by over a million and account for 50 percent of the County's population. The Latinos are re-establishing their position and visibility in the city's economic and political life. By anyone's account, Los Angeles is once again a Latino city.
City Council member Antonio Villaraigosa
was elected mayor in 2005, the first Latino elected to that office since the 1872.
In 2006 anti-immigration forces supported the federal The Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (H.R. 4437). The act would make "unlawful presence" an "aggravated felony." On 25 March, a million Latinos staged La Gran Marcha on City Hall to protest the bill. It was the largest demonstration in California history. Similar protests in other cities across the country made this a turning point in the debate on immigration reform
.
was a thriving community near the downtown railroad depot. Thousands of Chinese
came to northern California in the 1850s, initially to join the Gold Rush
and then taking construction jobs with the railroads. They began moving south as the transcontinental railroad linked Los Angeles with the rest of the nation. The town’s continuous Chinese presence dates from 1850, when two house servants, Ah Luce and Ah Fon, appeared in the census. The Chinese population increased to 16 in 1860 and 178 in 1870. Eighty percent of the Chinese residents then were male, and most worked as launderers, cooks and vegetable peddlers.
Later, Chinese workers who helped to build the aqueduct to the Owens River and worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley spent their winters in a segregated ethnic enclave in Los Angeles. In 1871, eleven years before the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a violent anti-Chinese demonstration swept through Los Angeles' Chinatown, killing Chinese residents and plundering their dry good stores, laundries and restaurants.
The labor vacuum created by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was filled by Japan
ese workers and, by 1910, the settlement now known as "Little Tokyo" had risen next to Chinatown.
During the years between the two world wars, Los Angeles' Asian American
community also included small clusters of Korean American
s and Filipinos
, the latter filling the void which followed the exclusion of the Japanese in 1924.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government authorized the evacuation and incarceration in concentration camps of all Japanese living in California irrespective of citizenship.
Since World War II, immigration from Asia and the Pacific has increased dramatically. The influx of immigrants from the Philippines
, Korea, Taiwan, the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia has led to the development of identifiable enclaves such as Koreatown in the central city and Samoans in Wilmington and a Thai
neighborhood in Hollywood.
Other articles which contain relevant history sections.
Articles on specific events in Los Angeles history
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
was transferred to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848...
that ended the Mexican-American War. Much greater changes were to come from the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
Transcontinental railroad
A transcontinental railroad is a contiguous network of railroad trackage that crosses a continental land mass with terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad, or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies...
in 1876.
For the next 120 years of Los Angeles' growth, it was plagued by often violent ethnic and class conflict, reflected in the struggle over who would control the city's identity, image, geography and history.
Prehistory
Recent archeological studiesArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
show there was a seafaring culture in Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
in 8,000 B.C.
By 3,000 B.C. the area was occupied by the Hokan-speaking people of the Milling Stone Period who fished, hunted sea mammals, and gathered wild seeds. They were later replaced by migrants — possibly fleeing drought in the Great Basin
Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America and is noted for its arid conditions and Basin and Range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than away at the...
— who spoke a Uto-Aztecan language called Tongva
Tongva language
-Collected by C. Hart Merriam :Numbers# Po-koo /bo'kʰøː/# Wěh-hā /ʋɛj'χɒː/# Pah-hā /pa'χɒː/# Wah-chah /ʋa'ʃɒχ/# Mah-har /ma'χɒʁ/# Pah-vah-hā /pa'va'χɒː/# Wah-chah-kav-e-ah /ʋa'ʃa'kʰav̥eʲa/...
, who were later named by the Spanish as the Gabrielinos and Fernandeños. The Tongva people called the Los Angeles region Yaa in Tongva
Tongva language
-Collected by C. Hart Merriam :Numbers# Po-koo /bo'kʰøː/# Wěh-hā /ʋɛj'χɒː/# Pah-hā /pa'χɒː/# Wah-chah /ʋa'ʃɒχ/# Mah-har /ma'χɒʁ/# Pah-vah-hā /pa'va'χɒː/# Wah-chah-kav-e-ah /ʋa'ʃa'kʰav̥eʲa/...
.
By the time of the arrival of the Spaniard in the 18th century A.D., there were 250,000 to 300,000 native people in California and 5,000 in the Los Angeles basin. Since contact with Europeans, the people in what became Los Angeles were known as Gabrielinos and Fernandeños, after the missions associated with them.
The land occupied and used by the Gabrielinos covered about four thousand square miles. It included the enormous floodplain drained by the Los Angeles
Los Angeles River
The Los Angeles River is a river that starts in the San Fernando Valley, in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, and flows through Los Angeles County, California, from Canoga Park in the western end of the San Fernando Valley, nearly southeast to its mouth in Long Beach...
and San Gabriel
San Gabriel River (California)
The San Gabriel River flows through southern Los Angeles County, California in the United States. Its main stem is about long, while its farthest tributaries extend almost altogether...
rivers and the southern Channel Islands
Channel Islands of California
The Channel Islands of California are a chain of eight islands located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel in the United States of America...
, including the Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara Island
Santa Barbara Island is a small island of the Channel Islands archipelago in California. It is located about off the Southern California coast from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, near Los Angeles in Ventura County, California....
, San Clemente, Santa Catalina, and San Nicholas Islands. They were part of a sophisticated group of trading partners that included the Chumash to the north, the Cahuilla
Cahuilla
The Cahuilla, Iviatim in their own language, are Indians with a common culture whose ancestors inhabited inland areas of southern California 2,000 years ago. Their original territory included an area of about . The traditional Cahuilla territory was near the geographic center of Southern California...
and Mojave to the east, and the Juaneños and Luiseños to the south. Their trade extended to the Colorado River
Colorado River
The Colorado River , is a river in the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The watershed of the Colorado River covers in parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states...
and included slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
.
The lives of the Gabrielinos were governed by a set of religious and cultural practices that included belief in creative supernatural forces. They worshipped a creator god, Chinigchinix
Chinigchinix
Chingichngish is the name of an important figure in the mythology of the Payomkowishum , Tongva , and Acjachemem Native Americans of coastal Southern California.-Character:This character was first mentioned in a description of the beliefs of the native...
, and a female virgin god, Chukit. Their Great Morning Ceremony was based on a belief in the afterlife. In a purification ritual similar to the Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
, they drank tolguache, a hallucinogenic made from jimson weed and salt water. Their language was called Kizh or Kij, and they practiced cremation
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
.
Generations before the arrival of the Europeans, the Gabrielinos had identified and lived in the best sites for human occupation. The survival and success of Los Angeles would depend greatly on the presence of a nearby and prosperous Gabrielino village called Yaanga. Its residents would provide the colonists with seafood, fish, bowls, pelts, and baskets. For pay, they would dig ditches, haul water, and provide domestic help. They often intermarried with the Mexican colonists.
Spanish Era 1769–1821
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was a Portuguese explorer noted for his exploration of the west coast of North America on behalf of Spain. Cabrillo was the first European explorer to navigate the coast of present day California in the United States...
and his crew. They were sailing up the coast looking for a new passage to Asia. In 1602, Captain Sebastián Vizcaíno
Sebastián Vizcaíno
Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Philippines, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Japan.-Early career:...
dropped anchor at Santa Catalina Island
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
and near San Pedro. It would be another 166 years before another European would visit the region.
The Spanish expedition of Alta California
Los Angeles had its beginnings between 1765 and 1771 in the plans of a royal bureaucrat visiting New Spain, General José de GálvezJosé de Gálvez
José de Gálvez y Gallardo, marqués de Sonora was a Spanish lawyer, a colonial official in New Spain and ultimately Minister of the Indies . He was one of the prime figures behind the Bourbon Reforms...
. He was in charge of implementing Bourbon administrative reforms. His reorganization included plans for the further exploration of Alta California and the settlement of a whole line of missions and presidios ("military forts"). The military forts were not self-sustaining, and the missions would supply them with goods and food.
Galvez petitioned the king to approve these plans with these arguments: 1. It would provide new revenues for the Vice Royalty governing New Spain. 2. It would protect the Spanish Empire in North America, especially from the encroaching Russians. 3. It would provide a base for increasing trade with Asia. The plans also had the support of the Franciscans who wanted to open new missions in Alta California.
Galvez's petition resulted in the formation of a joint land-and -sea expedition. Its primary purpose was to occupy Monterey
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo
Mission San Carlos Borroméo del río Carmelo, also known as the Carmel Mission, is a Roman Catholic mission church in Carmel, California. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and a U.S...
(which had been visited by Vizcaíno in 1602) and establish new missions and presidios there and in San Diego
Mission San Diego de Alcalá
Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, in San Diego, California, was the first Franciscan mission in the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It was founded in 1769 by Spanish friar Junípero Serra in an area long inhabited by the Kumeyaay Indians...
.
To lead the expedition, Galvez appointed the new governor of California Lieutenant Colonel Gaspar de Portola
Gaspar de Portolà
Gaspar de Portolà i Rovira was a soldier, governor of Baja and Alta California , explorer and founder of San Diego and Monterey. He was born in Os de Balaguer, province of Lleida, in Catalonia, Spain, of Catalan nobility. Don Gaspar served as a soldier in the Spanish army in Italy and Portugal...
and Father Junipero Serra
Junípero Serra
Blessed Junípero Serra, O.F.M., , known as Fra Juníper Serra in Catalan, his mother tongue was a Majorcan Franciscan friar who founded the mission chain in Alta California of the Las Californias Province in New Spain—present day California, United States. Fr...
, Franciscan head of the former Jesuit missions in Baja California.
During the land expedition from San Diego to Monterey, engineer Michael Costanso and Father Juan Crespi
Juan Crespi
Father Juan Crespí was a Majorcan missionary and explorer of Las Californias. He entered the Franciscan order at the age of seventeen. He came to America in 1749, and accompanied explorers Francisco Palóu and Junípero Serra. In 1767 he went to the Baja Peninsula and was placed in charge of the...
accompanied Portola. They kept careful notes of all they observed. Reaching the future site of Los Angeles, the party camped out along side a river. Portola named the river Porciuncula.
The name came from an approaching Franciscan religious celebration that honored the mother church of the Franciscans, the Porziuncola
Porziuncola
Porziuncola, also called Portiuncula or Porzioncula, Porciúncula is a small church located within the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in the frazione of Santa Maria degli Angeli, situated about from Assisi, Umbria...
("small piece of land") in the Italian frazione
Frazione
A frazione , in Italy, is the name given in administrative law to a type of territorial subdivision of a comune; for other administrative divisions, see municipio, circoscrizione, quartiere...
of Saint Mary of the Angels.
Father Crespi made these observations:
Thursday, 3, 1769. At half past six, we left the camp and forded the Porciuncula River, which runs down from the valley, flowing through it from the mountains to the plain. After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. All the soil is black and loamy, and is capable of producing every kind of grain and fruit which may be planted. We went west, continually over good land well covered with grass. After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which, on seeing us, came out to the road.
Plans for the pueblo
The one person most responsible for the founding of Los Angeles was the new Governor of California, Felipe de NeveFelipe de Neve
Felipe de Neve was a Spanish governor of Las Californias, an area that included present-day California , Baja California and Baja California Sur . His tenure as governor was from 1775 to 1782...
.
In 1777 Neve toured Alta California and decided to establish civic pueblos for the support of the military presidios. Neve was a Renaissance person. The new pueblos would reduce the secular power of the missions by reducing the dependency of the military on them. At the same time, they would promote the development of industry and agriculture.
Neve identified Santa Barbara, San Jose, and Los Angeles as sites for his new pueblos. His plans for them closely followed a set of Spanish city-planning laws contained in the Laws of the Indies
Laws of the Indies
The Laws of the Indies are the entire body of laws issued by the Spanish Crown for its American and Philippine possessions of its empire. They regulated social, political and economic life in these areas...
promulgated by King Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
in 1573. Those laws were responsible for laying the foundations of the largest cities in the region, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, and San Antonio—as well as Sonoma, Monterey, Santa Fe, San Jose, and Laredo.
The royal regulations were based on the ancient teachings of Vitruvius
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
, who set down the rules for founding of new cities in the Roman Empire. Basically, the Spanish laws called for an open central plaza, surrounded by a fortified church, administrative buildings, and streets laid out in a grid, defining rectangles of limited size to be used for farming (suertes) and residences (solares).
It was in accordance with such precise planning—specified in the Law of the Indies—that Governor Neve founded the pueblo of San Jose de Guadalupe, California's first municipality, on the great plain of Santa Clara on 29 November 1777.
The Los Angeles Pobladores
The Los Angeles PobladoresLos Angeles Pobladores
The Pobladores of Los Angeles refers to the 44 original settlers and 4 soldiers who founded city of Los Angeles, California in 1781....
("townspeople") is the name given to the 44 original settlers, 22 adults and 22 children, who founded the town.
In December, 1777 Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa
Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa
Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, marqués de Valleheroso y conde de Jerena was a Spanish military officer, governor of Cuba, and viceroy of New Spain .-Beginning of his administration:He was governor of Cuba when he was named viceroy...
and Commandant General Teodoro de Croix
Teodoro de Croix
Teodoro de Croix was a Spanish soldier and colonial official in New Spain and Peru. From April 6, 1784 to March 25, 1790 he was viceroy of Peru.-Background:...
gave approval for the founding of a civic municipality at Los Angeles and a new presidio at Santa Barbara.
Croix put the California lieutenant governor Fernando Rivera y Moncada
Fernando Rivera y Moncada
Fernando Javier Rivera y Moncada was a soldier from New Spain who served in the Baja California peninsula and upper Las Californias, participating in several early overland explorations. Fernando Rivera y Moncada served as a Spanish Miilitary Governor from 1774-1777. -Biography:Rivera was born...
in charge of recruiting colonists for the new settlements. He was originally instructed to recruit 55 soldiers, 22 settlers with families and 1,000 head of livestock that included horses for the military. After an exhausting search that took him to Mazatlan, Rosario, and Durango, Rivera y Moncada only recruited 12 settlers and 45 soldiers. Like the people of most towns in New Spain, they were a mix of Indian and Spanish backgrounds. Croix instructed Rivera y Moncada to delay no longer and proceed north. The soldiers, settlers, and livestock were assembled at Alamos, Sonora, before departure.
They were divided into two groups. One group, under Alfèrez Josè de Zúñiga and Alfèrez Ramon Laso de la Vega, set out for the coast. They crossed the Gulf of California on launches and then travelled overland to San Diego and up to San Gabriel.
The second group, under Rivera y Moncada, took an overland route over the desert, passing by the new missions on the Colorado River, La Purísima Concepción and Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer
Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer
Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer was founded on January 7, 1781 by Father Francisco Garcés to protect the Anza Trail where it forded the Colorado River....
. The group arrived at the Colorado River in June 1781. Rivera y Moncada sent most of his party ahead, but he stayed behind to rest the livestock before their drive across the desert. His party would never reach San Gabriel. The Quechan
Quechan
The Quechan are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the border with Mexico...
and Mojave Indians rose up against the party for encroaching on their farmlands and for other abuses inflicted by the soldiers. The Quechan Revolt was swift and killed 95 settlers and soldiers, including Rivera y Moncada.
Governor Neve had arrived in San Gabriel in April to finish his plans, El Reglamento, and select the exact location for Los Angeles. He carefully attended to every detail.
While waiting for the colonists to arrive, he visited Yaanga, the Indian village near his selected site. He selected several children for reception into the Church and baptized a young couple and had their marriage blessed. In his Reglamento, the newly baptized Indians were no longer to reside in the mission but live in their traditional rancherías (villages). Neve's new plans for the Indians' role in his new town drew instant disapproval from the mission priests.
Zúñiga's party arrived at the mission on 18 July 1781. Because they had arrived with smallpox, they were immediately quarantined a short distance away from the mission. Members of the other party would arrive at different times by August. They made their way to Los Angeles and probably received their land before September.
The founding
The official date for the founding of the city is September 4, 1781. According to a written message sent by Governor Neve to report the pueblo's juridical foundation, that was when 44 pobladoresLos Angeles Pobladores
The Pobladores of Los Angeles refers to the 44 original settlers and 4 soldiers who founded city of Los Angeles, California in 1781....
, or settlers, gathered at San Gabriel Mission
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
The Mission San Gabriel Arcángel is a fully functioning Roman Catholic mission and a historic landmark in San Gabriel, California. The settlement was founded by Spaniards of the Franciscan order on "The Feast of the Birth of Mary," September 8, 1771, as the fourth of what would become 21 Spanish...
and, escorted by soldiers and two padres from the mission, set out for the chosen spot that Crespí had recorded twelve years earlier. According to historian Antonio Rios-Bustamante, however, the families had arrived from Mexico earlier in 1781, in two groups, and some of them had most likely been working on their assigned plots of land since the early summer.
The name first given to the settlement is debated. Historian Doyce P. Nunis has said that the Spanish named it "El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles" ("The Town of the Queen of the Angels"). For proof, he pointed to a map dated 1785, where that phrase was used. Frank Weber, the diocesan archivist, replied, however, that the name given by the founders was "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula," or "the town of Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula." and that the map was in error.
The early pueblo
At the end of the first year only eight of the original founders were still in the pueblo; three had been forced out "for being useless to themselves and the town." But the town grew as soldiers and other settlers came into town and stayed. In 1784 a chapel was built on the Plaza. The pobladores were given title to their land two years later. By 1800, there were 29 buildings that surrounded the Plaza, flat-roofed, one-story adobe buildings with thatched roofs made of tule.By 1821 Los Angeles had grown into a self-sustaining farming community, the largest in Southern California. Its development conformed strictly to the Law of the Indies and the Reglamento of Governor Neve. The pueblo itself included a square of 10,000 varas, five and a quarter miles on each side. The central Plaza was in the middle, 75 varas (208 ft.) wide and 100 varas (277 ft.) long. On the west side of the Plaza facing east, space was reserved for a church and municipal buildings. Each vecino
Vecino
In Spanish-speaking areas, a vecino is nowadays a neighbor, or a resident of a place.In older times throughout the Spanish Empire, a person who has a house and home in a town or city and contributes to its expenses, not necessarily living near to the person referring to him; a local figure of some...
received a solar (lot) 20 varas (55.5 ft.) wide and 40 varas (110 ft.) long.
Each settler also received four rectangles of land, suertes, for farming, two irrigated plots and two dry ones. Each plot was 200 square varas. The farm plots were separated from the pueblo by a tract of land 200 varas wide. Some plots of land, propios, were set aside for the pueblo's general use and revenue. Other plots of land, realengas, were set aside for future settlers. Land outside the city, baldíos, included mountains, rivers, lakes, and forests, and belonged to the king.
When the settlers arrived, the Los Angeles floodplain was heavily wooded with willows and oaks. The Los Angeles river flowed all year. Wildlife was plentiful, including deer, antelope, and bear, even an occasional grizzly. There were abundant wetlands and swamps. Steelhead and salmon swam the rivers.
The first settlers built a water system consisting of ditches (zanjas) leading from the river through the middle of town and into the farmlands. Indians were employed to haul fresh drinking water from a special pool farther upstream. The city was first known as a producer of fine wine grapes. The raising of cattle and the commerce in tallow and hides would come later.
Because of the great economic potential for Los Angeles, the demand for Indian labor grew rapidly. Yaanga began attracting Indians from the islands and as far away as San Diego and San Luis Obispo. The village began to look like a refugee camp. Unlike the missions, the pobladores paid Indians for their labor. In exchange for their work as farm workers, vaqueros, ditch diggers, water haulers, and domestic help; they were paid in clothing and other goods as well as cash and alcohol. The pobladores bartered with them for prized sea-otter and seal pelts, sieves, trays, baskets, mats, and other woven goods. This commerce greatly contributed to the economic success of the town and the attraction of other Indians to the city.
During the 1780s, San Gabriel Mission became the object of an Indian revolt. The mission had expropriated all the suitable farming land; the Indians found themselves abused and forced to work on lands that they once owned. A young Indian healer, Toypurina
Toypurina
Toypurina was a Tongva/Gabrieliño Native American medicine woman who opposed the rule of colonization by Spanish missionaries in California, and led an unsuccessful rebellion against them....
began touring the area, preaching against the injustices suffered by her people. She won over four rancherías and led them in an attack on the mission at San Gabriel. The soldiers were able to defend the mission, and arrested 17, including Toypurina.
Because the Indians were exploited, starved, beaten, and raped in the pueblo as often as anywhere else, the officials knew they had to protect them to assure a cheap supply of labor. In 1787 Governor Pedro Fages
Pedro Fages
Pere Fages Beleta , nicknamed L'Ós , was a soldier, explorer, and the second Spanish military Governor of Las Californias Province of New Spain from 1770 to 1774, and the Governor of Las Californias from 1782 to 1791.-Life:...
drew up his "Instructions for the Corporal Guard of the Pueblo of Los Angeles." The Instructions included rules for employing Indians, not using corporal punishment, and protecting the Indian rancherías. As a result, Indians found themselves with more freedom to choose between the benefits of the missions and the pueblo-associated rancherías.
In 1784 California's first three ranchos were granted to soldiers, all in Los Angeles County. Rancho San Pedro
Rancho San Pedro
Rancho San Pedro was one of the first California land grants, and the first to win a patent from the United States. The land grant was validated by the Mexican government at in 1828, and a US patent validating was issued in 1858...
was given to Juan José Dominguez, Rancho San Rafael
Rancho San Rafael
Rancho San Rafael was a Spanish land grant bordering the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco in present day Los Angeles County, California, given in 1784 to Jose Maria Verdugo. The rancho includes the present day cities of Glendale, Eagle Rock, La Cañada, Montrose, and Verdugo City...
to José María Verdugo
Jose Maria Verdugo
José María Verdugo was a soldier from the Presidio of San Diego who was assigned to the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel at the time his land was granted by the Spanish Empire in 1784.-Spanish soldier:...
, and Rancho Los Nietos
Rancho Los Nietos
Rancho Los Nietos was one of the first, and the largest, Spanish land concession in Alta California. Located in present day Los Angeles County and Orange County, California. Rancho Los Nietos was awarded to Manuel Nieto in 1784...
to Mañuel Nieto. The grants stipulated that Indian employees stay clear of San Gabriel, further drawing them away from the missions and closer to the life of the pueblo.
In 1795, Sergeant Pablo Cota led an expedition from the Simi Valley through the Conejo-Calabasas region and into the San Fernando Valley. His party visited the rancho of Francisco Reyes. They found the local Indians hard at work as vaqueros and caring for crops. Padre Vincente de Santa Maria was traveling with the party and made these observations:
All of pagandom (Indians) is fond of the pueblo of Los Angeles, of the rancho of Reyes, and of the ditches (water system). Here we see nothing but pagans, clad in shoes, with sombreros and blankets, and serving as muleteers to the settlers and rancheros, so that if it were not for the gentiles there would be neither pueblos nor ranches. These pagan Indians care neither for the missions nor for the missionaries.
Not only economic ties but also marriage drew many Indians into the life of the pueblo. In 1784—only three years after the founding—the first recorded marriages in Los Angeles took place. The two sons of settler Basilio Rosas, Maximo and José Carlos, married two young Indian women, María Antonia and María Dolores.
The construction on the Plaza of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles took place between 1818 and 1822, much of it with Indian labor. The new church completed Governor Neve's planned transition of authority from mission to pueblo. The angelinos would no longer have to make the bumpy 11 miles (17.7 km) ride to Sunday Mass at Mission San Gabriel.
In 1820 the route of El Camino Viejo
El Camino Viejo
El Camino Viejo à Los Angeles , also known as the Old Los Angeles Trail, established in 1820's, was the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Alta California...
was established from Los Angeles, over the mountains to the north and up the west side of the San Joaquin Valley
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley is the area of the Central Valley of California that lies south of the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta in Stockton...
to the east side of San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
.
Although many Indians benefited from assimilation into the life of the pueblo, traditional Indians remained at the bottom of the social ladder and were exploited as workers.
The Mexican Era 1821–1848
Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821 was celebrated with great festivity throughout Alta California. No longer subjects of the king, people were now ciudadanos, citizens with rights under the law. In the plazas of Monterey, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and other settlements, people swore allegiance to the new government, the Spanish flag was lowered, and the flag of independent Mexico raised.Independence brought other advantages, including economic growth. There was a corresponding increase in population as more Indians were assimilated and others arrived from America, Europe, and other parts of Mexico. Before 1820, there were just 650 people in the pueblo. By 1841, the population nearly tripled to 1,680.
Secularization of the Missions
During the rest of the 1820s the agriculture and cattle ranching expanded, as did the trade in hides and tallow. The new church was completed, and the political life of the city developed. Los Angeles was separated from Santa Barbara administration. The system of ditches which provided water from the river was rebuilt. Trade and commerce further increased with the secularization of the California missions by the Mexican Congress in 1833. Extensive mission lands suddenly became available to government officials, ranchers, and land speculators. The governor made more than 800 land grants during this period.Much of this progress, however, bypassed the Indians of the traditional villages who were not assimilated into the mestizo culture. Being regarded as minors who could not think for themselves, they were increasingly marginalized and relieved of their land titles, often by being drawn into debt or alcohol.
In 1834, Governor Pico was married to Maria Ignacio Alvarado in the Plaza church. It was attended by the entire population of the pueblo, 800 people, plus hundreds from elsewhere in Alta California. In 1835, the Mexican Congress declared Los Angeles a city, making it the official capital of Alta California. It was now the region's leading city.
The same period also saw the arrival of many foreigners from the United States and Europe. They would play a pivotal role in the U.S. takeover. Early California settler John Bidwell
John Bidwell
John Bidwell was known throughout California and across the nation as an important pioneer, farmer, soldier, statesman, politician, prohibitionist and philanthropist...
included several historical figures in his recollection of people he knew in March, 1845.
It then had probably two hundred and fifty people, of whom I recall Don Abel Stearns, John TempleJonathan TempleJonathan Temple came to Los Angeles in 1828 and became a large landowner, cattle rancher and one of the area's wealthiest citizens.-Biography:...
, Captain Alexander Bell, William WolfskillWilliam WolfskillWilliam Wolfskill was a cowboy and agronomist from Los Angeles, California, who was highly influential in the development of California's agricultural industry in the 19th century.-Valencia orange:...
, Lemuel CarpenterLemuel CarpenterLemuel Carpenter, was one of the first Anglo-American settlers of what is now the Los Angeles, California metropolitan area.-Early life:Lemuel Carpenter was born ca. 1808 in Kentucky...
, David W. Alexander; also of Mexicans, Pio PicoPío PicoPío de Jesús Pico was the last Governor of Alta California under Mexican rule.-Origins:...
(governor), Don Juan BandiniJuan BandiniJuan Bandini was an early settler of what would become San Diego, California.-Early history:Juan Bandini was born 1800 in Lima, Peru to José Bandini, a Spanish sea captain. His father came to California in 1819 and 1821 and participated in the Mexican War of Independence...
, and others.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1831, Jean-Louis Vignes he bought 104 acre (0.42087344 km²) of land located between the original Pueblo and the banks of the Los Angeles River
Los Angeles River
The Los Angeles River is a river that starts in the San Fernando Valley, in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, and flows through Los Angeles County, California, from Canoga Park in the western end of the San Fernando Valley, nearly southeast to its mouth in Long Beach...
. He planted a vineyard and started preparing to make wine. He named his property El Aliso after the centuries old tree found near the entrance. The grapes available at the time, of the Mission variety
Mission (grape)
Mission grapes are a variety of Vitis vinifera introduced from Spain to the western coasts of North and South America in the 16th century by Catholic New World missionaries for use in making sacramental, table, and fortified wines.-History:...
, were brought to Alta California by the Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
Brothers at the end of the 18th century. They grew well and yielded large quantities of wine, but Jean-Louis Vignes was not satisfied with the results. Therefore, he decided to import better vines from Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley...
Cabernet Franc
Cabernet Franc
Cabernet Franc is one of the major black grape varieties worldwide. It is principally grown for blending with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the Bordeaux style, but can also be vinified alone - as in the Loire's Chinon...
and Sauvignon Blanc
Sauvignon blanc
Sauvignon Blanc is a green-skinned grape variety which originates from the Bordeaux region of France. The grape most likely gets its name from the French word sauvage and blanc due to its early origins as an indigenous grape in South West France., a possible descendant of savagnin...
. In 1840, Jean-Louis Vignes made the first recorded shipment of California wine. The Los Angeles market was too small for his production, and he loaded a shipment on the Monsoon, bound for Northern California. By 1842, he made regular shipments to Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
, Monterey
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
and San Francisco. By 1849, El Aliso, was the most extensive vineyard in California. Vignes owned over 40,000 vines and produced 150,000 bottles, or 1000 barrels, per year.
The Battle of Los Angeles
In May, 1846, the Mexican American War broke out. Because of Mexico's inability to defend its northern territories, California was exposed to invasion. On August 6, 1846, Commodore Robert F. StocktonRobert F. Stockton
Robert Field Stockton was a United States naval commodore, notable in the capture of California during the Mexican-American War. He was a naval innovator and an early advocate for a propeller-driven, steam-powered navy. Stockton was from a notable political family and also served as a U.S...
anchored off San Pedro and proceeded to march inland to occupy Los Angeles. On August 13, accompanied by John C. Frémont
John C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...
, Stockton marched into the Los Angeles Plaza with his brass band playing "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia." Stockton's troops occupied the headquarters and home of Governor Pico, who had fled to Mexico. After three weeks of occupation, Stockton left, leaving Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie
Archibald H. Gillespie
Major Archibald H. Gillespie was an officer in the United States Marine Corps during the Mexican-American War....
in charge.
Subsequent maltreatment by Gillespie and his troops caused a local force of 300 locals to rise up in protest, led by Captain José María Flores
José Mariá Flores
General José María Flores was an officer in the Mexican Army and was a member of la otra banda. He was appointed Governor and Comandante General pro tem of Alta California from 1846 to 1847.-Mexican-America War:...
, José Antonio Carrillo
José Antonio Carrillo
Captain José Antonio Ezequiel Carrillo was a Californio rancher, officer, and politician in the early years of Mexican Alta California and U.S...
, and Andrés Pico. Flores demanded the Americans surrender and promised safe passage to San Pedro. Gillespie accepted and departed, ending the first phase of the Battle of Los Angeles
Siege of Los Angeles
The Siege of Los Angeles was a military occupation by the United States Marines of the Pueblo de Los Angeles during the Mexican-American war.-Occupation:...
.
Full-scale warfare came to the area when Los Angeles residents dug up a colonial cannon that had been used for ceremonial purposes. They had buried it for safe-keeping when Stockton approached the city. They used it to fire on American Navy troops on 8 October 1846, in the Battle of Dominguez Rancho
Battle of Dominguez Rancho
The Battle of Dominguez Rancho or The Battle of the Old Woman's Gun was a military engagement of the Mexican-American War...
. The victorious locals named the cannon el piedrero de la vieja (the old woman's gun). In December, the Mexicans were again victorious at the Battle of San Pascual near present-day Escondido.
Determined to take Los Angeles, Stockton regrouped his men in San Diego and marched north with six hundred troops, along with U.S. Army General Stephen Watts Kearny and his guide Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
. Captain Frémont marched south from Monterey with 400 troops. After a few skirmishes outside the city, the two forces entered Los Angeles, this time without bloodshed.
Confronted with overwhelming force, Andrés Pico
Andrés Pico
Andrés Pico was a Californio who became a successful rancher, served as a military commander during the Mexican-American War; and was elected to the state assembly and senate after California became a state, when he was also commissioned as a brigadier general in the state militia.-Early...
, who had succeeded Flores as military commander and acting as chief administrative officer, met with Fremont. At a ranch in what is now Studio City, they signed the Treaty of Cahuenga
Treaty of Cahuenga
The Treaty of Cahuenga, also called the "Capitulation of Cahuenga," ended the fighting of the Mexican-American War in Alta California in 1847. It was not a formal treaty between nations but an informal agreement between rival military forces in which the Californios gave up fighting...
on 13 January 1847. That formally ended the California phase of the Mexican-American War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on 2 February 1848, ended the war and ceded California to the U.S.
The Transitional Era 1848–1870
According to historian Mary P. Ryan, "The U.S. army swept into California with the surveyor as well as the sword and quickly translated Spanish and Mexican practices into cartographic representations." Under colonial law, land held by grantees was not disposable. It reverted to the government. It was determined that under U.S. property law, lands owned by the city were disposable. Also, the diseños (property sketches) held by residents did not secure title in an American court.California's new military governor Bennett C. Riley ruled that land could not be sold that was not on a city map. In 1849, Lieutenant Edward Ord
Edward Ord
Edward Otho Cresap Ord was the designer of Fort Sam Houston, and a United States Army officer who saw action in the Seminole War, the Indian Wars, and the American Civil War. He commanded an army during the final days of the Civil War, and was instrumental in forcing the surrender of Confederate...
surveyed Los Angeles to confirm and extend the streets of the city. His survey put the city into the real-estate business, creating its first real-estate boom and filling its treasury. Street names were changed from Spanish to English. Further surveys and street plans quickly replaced the original plan for the pueblo with a new civic center south of the Plaza and a new use of space.
The fragmentation of Los Angeles real estate on the Anglo-Mexican axis had begun. Under the Spanish system, the residences of the power-elite clustered around the Plaza in the center of town. In the new American system, the power elite would reside in the outskirts. The emerging minorities, including the Chinese, Italians, French, and Russians, joined with the Mexicans near the Plaza.
The gangs of Los Angeles
In 1848, the gold discovered in ColomaColoma, California
Coloma is a census-designated place in El Dorado County, California, USA. It is approximately northeast of Sacramento, California. Coloma is most noted for being the site where James W. Marshall first discovered gold in California, at Sutter's Mill on January 24, 1848, leading to the California...
first brought thousands of miners from Sonora northern Mexico on the way to the gold fields. So many of them settled in the area north of the Plaza that it came to be known as Sonoratown.
During the Gold Rush years in northern California, Los Angeles became known as the “Queen of the Cow Counties” for its role in supplying beef and other foodstuffs to hungry miners in the north. Among the cow counties, Los Angeles County had the largest herds in the state followed closely by Santa Barbara and Monterey Counties.
With the temporary absence of a legal system, the city was quickly submerged in lawlessness. Many of the New York regiment disbanded at the end of the war and charged with maintaining order were thugs and brawlers. They roamed the streets joined by gamblers, outlaws, and prostitutes driven out of San Francisco and mining towns of the north by Vigilance Committees or lynch mobs
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
. Los Angeles came to be known as the "toughest and most lawless city west of Santa Fe."
Some of the residents resisted the new Anglo powers by resorting to social banditry against the gringo
Gringo
Gringo is a slang Spanish and Portuguese word used in Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America, to denote foreigners, often from the United States. The term can be applied to someone who is actually a foreigner, or it can denote a strong association or assimilation into...
s. In 1856, Juan Flores
Juan Flores
Juan Flores was a 19th century Californio bandit who, with Pancho Daniel, led an outlaw gang known as "las Manillas" and later as the Flores Daniel Gang, throughout Southern California during 1856-1857...
threatened Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
with a full-scale revolt. He was hanged
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
in Los Angeles in front of 3,000 spectators. Tiburcio Vasquez
Tiburcio Vasquez
Tiburcio Vásquez was a Californio bandit who was active in California from 1854 to 1874. The Vasquez Rocks, 40 miles north of Los Angeles, were one of his many hideouts and are named for him.-Early life:...
, a legend in his own time among the Mexican-born population for his daring feats against the Anglos, was captured in present-day Santa Clarita, California
Santa Clarita, California
Santa Clarita is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States and the twenty-fourth largest city in the state of California. The 2010 US Census reported the city's population grew 16.7% from the year 2000 to 176,320 residents. It is located about northwest of downtown...
on May 14, 1874. He was found guilty of two counts of murder by a San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
jury in 1874, and was hanged there in 1875.
Los Angeles had several active Vigilance Committees during that era. Between 1850 and 1870, mobs carried out approximately 35 lynchings of Mexicans—more than four times the number that occurred in San Francisco. Los Angeles was described as “undoubtedly the toughest town of the entire nation.” The homicide rate between 1847 and 1870 averaged 158 per 100,000 (13 murders per year), which was 10 to 20 times the annual murder rates for New York City during the same period.
The fear of Mexican violence and the racially motivated violence inflicted on them further marginalized the Mexicans, greatly reducing their economic and political opportunities.
John Gately Downey, the seventh Governor of California was sworn into office on January 14, 1860, thereby becoming the first Governor from Southern California. Governor Downey was born and raised in Castlesampson, County Roscommon, Ireland, and came to Los Angeles in 1850. He was responsible for keeping California in the Union during the Civil War.
The plight of the Indians
In 1836, the Indian village of Yaanga was relocated near the future corner of Commercial and Alameda Streets. In 1845, it was relocated again to present-day Boyle Heights. With the coming of the Americans, disease took a great toll among Indians. Between 1848 and 1880, the total population of Los Angeles went from 75,050 to 12,500. Self-employed Indians were not allowed to sleep over in the city. They faced increasing competition for jobs as more Mexicans moved into the area and took over the labor force. Those who loitered or were drunk or unemployed were arrested and auctioned off as laborers to those who paid their fines. They were often paid for work with liquor, which only increased their problems.Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city on April 4, 1850. Five months later, California was admitted into the Union. Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo required the U.S. to grant citizenship to the Indians of former Mexican territories, the U.S. did not get around to doing that for another 80 years. The Constitution of California deprived Indians of any protection under the law, considering them as non-persons. As a result, it was impossible to bring an Anglo to trial for killing an Indian or forcing them off their property. Anglos concluded that the "quickest and best way to get rid of (their) troublesome presence was to kill them off, (and) this procedure was adopted as a standard for many years."
When New England author and Indian-rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson
Helen Hunt Jackson
Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske , was a United States writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor...
toured the Indian villages of Southern California in 1883, she was appalled by the racism of the Anglos living there. She found they treated Indians worse than animals, hunted them for sport, robbed them of their farmlands, and brought them to the edge of extermination. While Indians were depicted by whites as lazy and shiftless, she found most of them to be hard-working craftsmen and farmers. Jackson's tour inspired her to write her 1884 novel, Ramona
Ramona
Ramona is a 1884 United States historical novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson. It is the story of a Scots-Native American orphan girl in Southern California, who suffers racial discrimination and hardship. Originally serialized in the Christian Union on a weekly basis, the novel became immensely...
, which she hoped would give a human face to the atrocities and indignities suffered by the Indians in California. And it did. The novel was enormously successful, inspiring four movies and a yearly pageant in Hemet, California. Many of the Indian villages of Southern California survived because of her efforts, including Morongo, Cahuilla
Cahuilla
The Cahuilla, Iviatim in their own language, are Indians with a common culture whose ancestors inhabited inland areas of southern California 2,000 years ago. Their original territory included an area of about . The traditional Cahuilla territory was near the geographic center of Southern California...
, Soboba, Temecula, Pechanga, and Warner Hot Springs.
Remarkably, the Gabrielino Indians, now called Tongva, also survived. in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that there were 2,000 of them still living in Southern California. Some were organizing to protect burial and cultural sites. Others were trying to win federal recognition as a tribe to operate a casino.
Industrial Expansion and Growth 1870—1913
In the 1870s, Los Angeles was still little more than a village of 5,000. By 1900, there were over 100,000 occupants of the city. Several men actively promoted Los Angeles, working to develop it into a great city and to make themselves rich. Angelenos set out to remake their geography to challenge San Francisco with its port facilities, railway terminal, banks and factories. The Farmers and Merchants Bank of Los Angeles was the first incorporated bank in Los Angeles, founded in 1871 by John G. DowneyJohn G. Downey
John Gately Downey was an Irish-American politician and the seventh Governor of California from January 14, 1860 to January 10, 1862. Until the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, Downey was California's only foreign-born governor...
and Isaias W. Hellman
Isaias W. Hellman
Isaias Wolf Hellman was a German-Jewish banker and philanthropist, and a founding father of the University of Southern California.-Biography:...
.
The Chinese Massacre of 1871
The first Chinese arrived in Los Angeles in 1850. The great majority came from Guangdong Province in southeastern China, seeking a fortune in Gum Saan, ("Gold Mountain") the Chinese name for America. Instead of finding fortunes, they were exploited for their labor in the gold mines and in building the first railroad into California. Henry Huntington came to value their expertise as engineers. He later said he would not have been able to build his portion of the transcontinental railroad without them.After the transcontinental railroad was completed, the Chinese sought jobs in the burgeoning California cities, where they faced massive discrimination on the part of organized labor. As a result, they filled in where there was less competition, running laundries, restaurants, and vegetable stands.
In a time of great exploitation and monopoly by the railroad barons, the unions blamed Chinese for lowering the wages and living standards of Anglo workers. The newspapers of both Los Angeles and San Francisco were filled with anti-Chinese propaganda.
The thriving Chinatown, on the eastern edge of the Plaza, was the site of terrible violence on October 24, 1871. A gunfight between rival Chinese factions over the abduction of a woman resulted in the accidental death of a white man. This enraged the bystanders, and a mob
Crowd
A crowd is a large and definable group of people, while "the crowd" is referred to as the so-called lower orders of people in general...
of about 500 Anglos and Latinos descended on Chinatown. They randomly lynched 19 Chinese men and boys, only one of whom may have been involved in the original killing. Homes and businesses were looted. Only ten rioters were tried. Eight were convicted of manslaughter, but their convictions were overturned the following year on a legal technicality. This was later referred to as the Chinese Massacre of 1871
Chinese Massacre of 1871
The Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot on October 24, 1871, when a mob of over 500 white men entered Los Angeles' Chinatown to attack, rob and brutally murder Chinese residents of the city...
.
The massacre was the first time that Los Angeles was reported on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, even crowding out reports of the terrible Chicago fire that had taken place two weeks earlier. While the racist Los Angeles Star went so far to call the massacre "a glorious victory," others fretted about the city's racist and violent image. With the coming economic opportunities of the railroads, city fathers set themselves to wipe out mob violence.
Their efforts, however, led to more restrictive measures against the Chinese. In 1878–79, the City Council passed several measures adversely affecting Chinese vegetable merchants. The merchants went on strike. Los Angeles went without vegetables for several weeks, finally bringing the city to the bargaining table. Historian William Estrada wrote: "This little-known event may have helped the Chinese to better understand their role in the community as well as the power of organization as a means for community self-defense. The strike was a sign that Los Angeles was undergoing dramatic social, economic, and technological change and that the Chinese were a part of that change."
The coming of the railroads
Historian Blake Gumprecht wrote, "The completion of a transcontinental railroad to Los Angeles in 1876 changed Southern California forever."The first railroad, San Pedro Railroad, was inaugurated in October, 1869 by John G. Downey
John G. Downey
John Gately Downey was an Irish-American politician and the seventh Governor of California from January 14, 1860 to January 10, 1862. Until the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, Downey was California's only foreign-born governor...
and Phineas Banning
Phineas Banning
Phineas Banning was an American businessman, financier, and entrepreneur.Known as "The Father of the Port of Los Angeles," he was one of the founders of the town of Wilmington, which was named for his birthplace...
. It ran 21 miles (33.8 km) between San Pedro and Los Angeles.
The town continued to grow at a moderate pace until its connection with the Central Pacific
Central Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...
and San Francisco in 1876, and more directly with the East by the Santa Fe system
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often abbreviated as Santa Fe, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The company was first chartered in February 1859...
(through its subsidiary California Southern Railroad
California Southern Railroad
The California Southern Railroad was a subsidiary railroad of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in Southern California. It was organized July 10, 1880, and chartered on October 23, 1880, to build a rail connection between what has become the city of Barstow and San Diego,...
) in 1885.
The Central Pacific Railroad had a significant impact in the immediate growth of the City of Los Angeles. The Central Pacific Railroad owners could have chosen San Diego over Los Angeles to be their final freight destination but the owners and the City of San Francisco feared that San Diego would become a rival importing power with its large natural bay. Instead, Central Pacific picked Los Angeles to be their southern hub and prompted the rapid expansion of the city's economic growth and expansion. The completion of the latter line precipitated one of the most extraordinary of American railway wars and land booms, which resulted in giving southern California a great stimulus.
Phineas Banning excavated a channel out of the mud flats of San Pedro Bay
San Pedro Bay (California)
San Pedro Bay is an inlet on the Pacific Ocean coast of southern California, United States. It is the site of the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, which together form the fifth-busiest port facility in the world and easily the busiest in the Western Hemisphere...
leading to Wilmington
Wilmington, Los Angeles, California
Wilmington is a district of Los Angeles, with industry as its primary economic activity. It lies adjacent to the Port of Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Harbor City. Wilmington is the site of Banning House and Drum Barracks, or Camp Drum, the only major American Civil War landmark in California. The...
in 1871. Banning had already laid track and shipped in locomotives to connect the port to the city. Harrison Gray Otis, founder and owner of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, and a number of business colleagues embarked on reshaping southern California by expanding that into a harbor
Harbor
A harbor or harbour , or haven, is a place where ships, boats, and barges can seek shelter from stormy weather, or else are stored for future use. Harbors can be natural or artificial...
at San Pedro using federal dollars.
This put them at loggerheads with Collis P. Huntington
Collis P. Huntington
Collis Potter Huntington was one of the Big Four of western railroading who built the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad...
, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and one of California's "Big Four" investors in the Central Pacific
Central Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...
and Southern Pacific
Southern Pacific Railroad
The Southern Pacific Transportation Company , earlier Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Company, and usually simply called the Southern Pacific or Espee, was an American railroad....
. (The "Big Four" are sometimes numbered among the "robber baron
Robber baron (industrialist)
Robber baron is a pejorative term used for a powerful 19th century American businessman. By the 1890s the term was used to attack any businessman who used questionable practices to become wealthy...
s" of the Gilded Age
Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded...
). The line reached Los Angeles in 1876 and Huntington directed it to a port at Santa Monica
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
, where the Long Wharf was built.
April 1872, John G. Downey went to San Francisco and was successful in representing Los Angeles in discussions with Collis Huntington concerning Los Angeles’s efforts to bring the Southern Pacific Railroad through Los Angeles.
The San Pedro forces eventually prevailed (though it required Banning and Downey to turn their railroad over to the Southern Pacific). Work on the San Pedro breakwater began in 1899 and was finished in 1910. Otis Chandler and his allies secured a change in state law in 1909 that allowed Los Angeles to absorb San Pedro and Wilmington, using a long, narrow corridor of land to connect them with the rest of the city. The debacle of the future Los Angeles harbor was termed the Free Harbor Fight
Free Harbor Fight
Free Harbor Fight refers to the legal battle in the late nineteenth century on the West Coast of the United States, around the case Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce vs. Huntington and the Southern Pacific....
.
In 1898, Henry Huntington purchased the Los Angeles Railway
Los Angeles Railway
The Los Angeles Railway was a system of streetcars that operated in central Los Angeles, California and the immediate surrounding neighborhoods between from 1901 and 1963. Except for two short funicular railways it operated on tracks...
(the 'yellow cars') and two years later founded the Pacific Electric Railway
Pacific Electric Railway
The Pacific Electric Railway , also known as the Red Car system, was a mass transit system in Southern California using streetcars, light rail, and buses...
(the 'red cars'). Los Angeles Railway served the city and the Pacific Electric Railway served the rest of the county. At its peak, the Pacific Electric was the largest electrically operated interurban railway in the world. Over 1000 miles (1,609.3 km) of tracks connected Los Angeles with Hollywood, Pasadena, San Pedro, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Pomona, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, and other points and was recognized as best public transportation system in the world.
Oil discovery
OilPetroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
was discovered by Edward L. Doheny
Edward L. Doheny
Edward Laurence Doheny was an American oil tycoon, who in 1892, along with business partner Charles A. Canfield, drilled the first successful oil well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field, setting off the petroleum boom in Southern California.At first he was an unsuccessful prospector in the state of...
in 1892, near the present location of Dodger Stadium
Dodger Stadium
Dodger Stadium, also sometimes called Chavez Ravine, is a stadium in Los Angeles. Located adjacent to Downtown Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium has been the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers team since 1962...
. The Los Angeles City Oil Field
Los Angeles City Oil Field
The Los Angeles City Oil Field is a large oil field north of Downtown Los Angeles. Long and narrow, it extends from immediately south of Dodger Stadium west to Vermont Avenue, encompassing an area of about four miles long by a quarter mile across...
was the first of many fields in the basin to be exploited, and in 1900 and 1902, respectively, the Beverly Hills Oil Field
Beverly Hills Oil Field
The Beverly Hills Oil Field is a large and currently active oil field underneath part of the city of Beverly Hills, California, USA, and portions of the adjacent city of Los Angeles...
and Salt Lake Oil Field
Salt Lake Oil Field
The Salt Lake Oil Field is an oil field underneath the city of Los Angeles, California. Discovered in 1902, and developed quickly in the following years, the Salt Lake field was once the most productive in California; over 50 million barrels of oil have been extracted from it, mostly in the first...
were discovered just a few miles west of the original find. Los Angeles became a center of oil production in the early 20th century, and by 1923 the region was producing one-quarter of the world's total supply; it is still a significant producer, with the Wilmington Oil Field
Wilmington Oil Field
The Wilmington Oil Field is a large petroleum field in Los Angeles County in southern California in the United States in terms of cumulative oil produced. Discovered in 1932, it is the third largest oil field in the United States...
having the fourth-largest reserves of any field in California.
Winds of revolution
The immigrants arriving in the city to find jobs often brought the revolutionary zeal and idealism of their homelands. These often included anarchists such as Russian Emma GoldmanEmma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
and Ricardo Flores Magón
Ricardo Flores Magón
Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas....
and his brother Enrique of the Partido Liberal Mexicano. They were later joined by the socialist candidate for mayor Job Harriman
Job Harriman
Job Harriman was an ordained minister who later became an agnostic and a socialist. In 1900 he ran for Vice President of the United States along with Eugene Debs on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America. He later twice ran for mayor of Los Angeles, drawing considerable attention and support...
, Chinese revolutionaries, the novelist Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, "Wobblies" (members of the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, the IWW), and Socialist and Communist labor organizers such as the Japanese-American Karl Yoneda
Karl Yoneda
Karl Gozo Yoneda was a Japanese American activist, union organizer, World War II veteran and author. He played a substantial role in the founding of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.-Early life:...
and the Russian-born New Yorker Meyer Baylin. The Socialists were the first to set up a soapbox in the Plaza, which would serve as the location of union rallies and protests and riots as the police attempted to break up meetings.
Class conflict surges
At the same time that the L.A. Times was whipping up enthusiasm for the expansion of Los Angeles it was also trying to turn it into a union-free or open shopOpen shop
An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of hiring or continued employment...
town. Fruit growers and local merchants who had opposed the Pullman strike
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and railroads that occurred in the United States in 1894. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois on May 11 when approximately 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent...
in 1894 subsequently formed the Merchants and Manufacturers Association (M & M) to support the L.A. Times anti-union campaign.
The California labor movement, with its strength concentrated in San Francisco, had largely ignored Los Angeles for years. It changed, in 1907, however, when the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
decided to challenge the open shop of "Otis Town."
In 1909, the city fathers placed a ban on free speech from public streets and private property except for the Plaza. Locals had claimed that it had been an Open Forum forever. The area was of particular concern to the owners of the L.A. Times, Harrison Grey Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler.
At the turn of the century, Otis and Chandler as part of a syndicate had acquired thousands of acres of farmland in Baja California that stretched across the border into Imperial County. It was called the California-Mexican Land and Cattle Company, or the C-M Ranch.
In exchange for favorable reports about the presidency of Porfirio Diaz
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...
in Mexico, Otis and his associates enjoyed unfettered business freedom in Baja California. Under Diaz,
American capitalists bought millions of acres of Mexican land, mines, factories, banks, oil rights (Doheny), public utilities, and most of the nation's railroads. The Diaz regime was marked with increasing poverty, violent political repression, and the support of President Wilson.
The Otis-Chandler plans for both their Mexican holdings and the city required a steady supply of cheap labor and keeping the unions from succeeding as they had done in San Francisco.
In 1910, the century's first full-scale revolution took place in Baja California, led by two factions, wealthy landowner Francisco Madero and the Partido Liberal
Mexicano (PLM). The PLM was based in the L.A. Plaza and led by anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón, a talented journalist and charismatic speaker who occupies a special place in the
story of Los Angeles. He is the prototype of the 20th-century Mexican-American political and social activist.
Publishing the popular bi-lingual Regeneracion newspaper in Los Angeles, Magon's movement posed a direct challenge to Otis and Chandler's hold on the border
region. The paper not only reported on the revolution in Mexico, but also social and political conditions in the U.S. It examined the U.S. penal system, the
plight of agricultural workers, child labor, Margaret Sanger's crusade for women, and most of all the battle against the open shop in Los Angeles. The
paper also connected readers with the social services and cultural happenings available in the expanding Plaza area.
Magon wrote: "We do not struggle for abstractions, but for materialities. We want land for all, bread for all. Inevitably blood must run, so that conquests obtain benefits for all and not for a specific social class."
The insurgents of the Baja Revolution consisted of no more than 200 anarchists,
socialists, and Wobblies. Their basic goal was the redistribution back to Mexican peasants of Baja California land, of which 78
percent was owned by foreign interests.
The owners of the Times drew the conclusion that the Mexican rebels and union organizers in L.A. were connected. This conflict came to a head with the bombing of the Times in 1910, which killed 10 people, and injured 17. Two months later, the Llewellyin Iron Works near the plaza was bombed. A meeting was hastily called of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers Association. The L.A. Times wrote: "radical and practical matters (were) considered, and steps taken for the adaption of such as are adequate to cope with a situation tardily recognized as the gravest that Los Angeles has ever been called upon to face."
The authorities indicted John and James McNamara, both associated with the Iron Workers Union, for the bombing; Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
, who had successfully defended Big Bill Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone in Idaho, represented them.
At the same time the McNamara brothers were awaiting trial, Los Angeles was preparing for a city election. Job Harriman, running on the socialist ticket, was challenging the establishment's candidate.
Harriman's campaign, however, was tied to the asserted innocence of the McNamaras. But the defense was in trouble: the prosecution not only had evidence of the McNamaras' complicity, but had trapped Darrow in a clumsy attempt to bribe one of the jurors. On December 1, 1911, four days before the final election, the McNamaras entered a plea of guilty in return for prison terms. The L.A. Times accompanied its report of the guilty plea with a faked photograph of Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
trampling an American flag
Flag of the United States
The national flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars alternating with rows...
. Harriman lost badly.
The Otis-Chandler interests were further challenged when Madero became President of Mexico in 1911. Commercial interests in L.A. felt radical measures had to be
taken. Mexican and labor organizers were scapegoated.
In June 1911, the police raided the offices of Regeneracion. Magon and his younger brother Enrique were arrested with two others and charged with conspiracy to lead an armed expedition against a "friendly nation." The trial was a great media event and drew great crowds. Among those who showed up to speak on behalf of the brothers were socialist labor organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, American anarchist Emma Goldman, and Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...
.
The four were convicted and sentenced to 23 months at the federal prison in Macneil Island, Washington.
On Christmas Day, 1913, police attempted to break up an IWW rally of 500 taking place in the Plaza. Encountering resistance, the police waded into the crowd attacking them with their clubs. One citizen was killed. In the aftermath, the authorities attempted to impose martial law in the wake of growing protests.
Seventy-three people were arrested in connection with the riots. The City Council introduced new measures to control public speaking. The Times scapegoated all foreign elements even calling onlookers and taco venders as "cultural subversives."
In 1916, the Magón brothers were arrested on charges of defamation and sending indecent materials through the mail. Ricardo was able to get released on bail. He gave a rousing speech at Italian Hall to 700 of the International Workers Defense League. He called Mexican President Carranza a "lackey of President Wilson" and Wilson "the bandit of Wall Street." The speech was given wide circulation in the press throughout the Southwest and in Mexico.
Ricardo was convicted and sent to Leavenworth. In 1922, he died in his cell, maybe murdered by a guard. His body was returned by train to Mexico City, where he was given a hero's welcome by a crowd of thousands consisting of workers, labor organizers, and government officials singing La Marsellaise and the Internationale.
The open shop campaign continued from strength to strength, although not without meeting opposition from workers. By 1923, the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
had made considerable progress in organizing the longshoremen in San Pedro and led approximately 3,000 men to walk off the job. With the support of the L.A. Times, a special "Red Squad" was formed within the Los Angeles Police Department
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
and arrested so many strikers that the city's jails were soon filled.
Some 1,200 dock workers were corralled in a special stockade in Griffith Park
Griffith Park
Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park covers of land, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America...
. The L.A. Times wrote approvingly that "stockades and forced labor were a good remedy for IWW terrorism." Public meetings were outlawed in San Pedro, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
was arrested at Liberty Hill in San Pedro for reading the United States Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
on the private property of a strike supporter (the arresting officer told him "we'll have none of 'that Constitution stuff'") and blanket arrests were made at union gatherings. The strike ended after members of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and the American Legion
American Legion
The American Legion is a mutual-aid organization of veterans of the United States armed forces chartered by the United States Congress. It was founded to benefit those veterans who served during a wartime period as defined by Congress...
raided the IWW Hall and attacked the men, women and children meeting there. The strike was defeated.
Los Angeles developed another industry in the early 20th century when movie producers from the East Coast relocated there. These new employers were likewise afraid of unions and other social movements: during Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
's campaign for Governor of California
Governor of California
The Governor of California is the chief executive of the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual State of the State addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced...
under the banner of his "End Poverty In California" (EPIC) movement, Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
turned MGM's Culver City
Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...
studio into the unofficial headquarters of the organized campaign against EPIC. MGM produced fake newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
interviews with whiskered actors with Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
accents voicing their enthusiasm for EPIC, along with footage focusing on central casting
Central casting
Central Casting is a casting company located in Burbank, California, United States. They currently specialize in casting extras, body doubles, and stand-ins.-History:...
hobo
Hobo
A hobo is a term which is often applied to a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, often penniless. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States during the last decade of the 19th century. Unlike 'tramps', who work only when they are forced to, and 'bums', who do not...
s huddled on the borders of California waiting to enter and live off the bounty of its taxpayers once Sinclair was elected. Sinclair lost.
Los Angeles also acquired another industry in the years just before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
: the garment industry. At first devoted to regional merchandise such as sportswear, the industry eventually grew to be the second largest center of garment production in the United States.
Unions began to make progress in organizing these workers as the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
arrived in the 1930s. They made even greater gains in the war years, as Los Angeles grew even further.
Today, the ethnic makeup of the city and the politically progressive views of surrounding West Hollywood and Hollywood have made Los Angeles a strong union town. However, many garment workers in central LA, most of whom are Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
immigrants, still work in sweat shop conditions.
The battle of the Los Angeles River
The Los Angeles RiverLos Angeles River
The Los Angeles River is a river that starts in the San Fernando Valley, in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, and flows through Los Angeles County, California, from Canoga Park in the western end of the San Fernando Valley, nearly southeast to its mouth in Long Beach...
flowed clear and fresh all year, supporting 45 Gabrielino villages in the area. The source of the river was the aquifer
Aquifer
An aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology...
under the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
, supplied with water from the surrounding mountains. The rising of the underground bedrock at the Glendale Narrows (near today's Griffith Park
Griffith Park
Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park covers of land, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America...
) squeezed the water to the surface at that point. Then, through much of the year, the river emerged from the valley to flow across the floodplain 20 miles (32.2 km) to the sea. The area also provided other streams, lakes, and artesian wells.
Early settlers were more than a little discouraged by the region's diverse and unpredictable weather. They watched helplessly as long droughts weakened and starved their livestock, only to be drowned and carried off by ferocious storms. During the years of little rain, people would build too close to the riverbed, only to see their homes and barns later swept out to sea during a flood. The location of the Los Angeles Plaza had to be moved twice because of previously having been built too close to the riverbed.
Worse, floods would change the river's course. When the settlers arrived, the river joined Ballona Creek
Ballona Creek
Ballona Creek is an waterway in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, whose watershed drains the Los Angeles basin, from the Santa Monica Mountains on the north, the Harbor Freeway on the east, and the Baldwin Hills on the south...
to discharge in Santa Monica Bay
Santa Monica Bay
Santa Monica Bay is a bight of the Pacific Ocean in southern California, United States. Its boundaries are slightly ambiguous, but it is generally considered to be the part of the Pacific within an imaginary line drawn between Point Dume, in Malibu, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Its eastern...
. A fierce storm in 1835 diverted its course to Long Beach, where it stays today.
Early citizens could not even maintain a footbridge over the river from one side of the city to the other. After the American takeover, the city council authorized spending of $20,000 for a contractor to build a substantial wooden bridge across the river. The first storm to come along dislodged the bridge, used it as a battering ram to break through the embankment, and scattered its timbers all the way to the sea.
Some of the most concentrated rainfall in the history of the United States has occurred in the San Gabriel Mountains
San Gabriel Mountains
The San Gabriel Mountains Range is located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range lies between the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert, with Interstate 5 to the west and Interstate 15 to the east...
north of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. On April 5, 1926, a rain gauge in the San Gabriels collected one inch in one minute. In January, 1969, more water fell on the San Gabriels in nine days than New York City sees in a year. In February 1978, almost a foot of rain fell in 24 hours, and, in one blast, an inch and a half in five minutes. This storm caused massive debris flow
Debris flow
A debris flow is a fast moving, liquefied landslide of unconsolidated, saturated debris that looks like flowing concrete. It is differentiated from a mudflow in terms of the viscosity and textural properties of the flow. Flows can carry material ranging in size from clay to boulders, and may...
s throughout the region, one of them unearthing the corpses in the Verdugo Hills Cemetery and depositing them in the town below. Another wiped out the small town of Hidden Springs in a tributary of the Big Tujunga River, killing 13 people.
The greatest daily rainfall recorded in California was 26.12 inches on January 23, 1943 at Hoegees near Mt. Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains. Fifteen other stations reported over 20 inches in two days from the same storm. Forty-five others reported 70 percent of the average annual rainfall in two days.
Quibbling between city and county governments delayed any response to the flooding until a massive storm in 1938 flooded Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The federal government stepped in. To transfer floodwater to the sea as quickly as possible, the Army Corps of Engineers paved the beds of the river and its tributaries. The Corps also built several dams and catchment basins
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
in the canyons along the San Gabriel Mountains to reduce the debris flows. It was an enormous project, taking years to complete.
Today, the Los Angeles River functions mainly as a flood control. A drop of rain falling in the San Gabriel Mountains will reach the sea faster than an auto can drive. During today's rainstorms, the volume of the Los Angeles River at Long Beach can be as large as the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
at St. Louis.
The drilling of wells and pumping of water from the San Fernando Valley aquifer dried up the river by the 1920s. By 1980, the aquifer was supplying drinking water for 800,000 people. In that year, it was discovered that the aquifer had been contaminated. Many wells were shut down, as the area qualified as a Superfund site
Water from a distance
For its first 120 years, the Los Angeles River supplied the town with ample water for homes and farms. It was estimated that the annual flow could have support a town of 250,000 people—if the water had been managed right. But Angelinos were among the most profligate users of water in the world. In the semi-arid climate, they were forever watering their lawns, gardens, orchards, and vineyards. Later on, they would need more to support the growth of commerce and manufacturing. By the beginning of the 20th century, the town realized it would quickly outgrow its river and need new sources of water.Legitimate concerns about water supply were exploited to gain backing for a huge engineering and legal effort to bring more water to the city and allow more development. The city fathers had their eyes on the Owens River
Owens River
The Owens River is a river in southeastern California in the United States, approximately long. It drains into and through the Owens Valley, an arid basin between the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and the western faces of the Inyo and White Mountains. The river terminates at Owens Lake, but...
, about 250 miles (400 km) northeast of Los Angeles in Inyo County
Inyo County, California
-National protected areas:* Death Valley National Park * Inyo National Forest * Manzanar National Historic Site-Major highways:* U.S. Route 6* U.S. Route 395* State Route 127* State Route 136* State Route 168* State Route 178...
, near the Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
state line. It was a permanent stream of fresh water fed by the melted snows of the eastern Sierra Nevada. It flowed through the Owens River Valley before emptying into the shallow, saline Owens Lake
Owens Lake
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is located about south of Lone Pine, California...
, where it evaporated.
Harry Chandler
Harry Chandler was an American newspaper publisher and investor who became owner of the largest real estate empire in the U.S.-Biography:...
, engaged in successful efforts at buying up cheap land on the northern outskirts of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
. At the same time, they enlisted the help of William Mulholland
William Mulholland
William Mulholland was the head of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, in Los Angeles. He was responsible for building the water aqueducts and dams that allowed the city to grow into one of the largest in the world. His methods of obtaining water for the city led to disputes collectively...
, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Water Department (later the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving over four million residents. It was founded in 1902 to supply water and electricity to residents and businesses in Los Angeles and surrounding communities...
or LADWP), and J.B. Lippencott, of the United States Reclamation Service.
Lippencott performed water surveys in the Owens Valley for the Service while secretly receiving a salary from the City of Los Angeles. He succeeded in persuading Owens Valley farmers and mutual water companies to pool their interests and surrender the water rights to 200,000 acres (800 km²) of land to Fred Eaton
Fred Eaton
Frederick Eaton , known as Fred Eaton, was a major individual in the transformation and expansion of Los Angeles in the latter 19th century through early 20th century, in California, United States...
, Lippencott's agent and a former mayor of Los Angeles. Lippencott then resigned from the Reclamation Service, took a job with the Los Angeles Water Department as assistant to Mulholland, and turned over the Reclamation Service maps, field surveys and stream measurements to the city. Those studies served as the basis for designing the longest aqueduct
Aqueduct
An aqueduct is a water supply or navigable channel constructed to convey water. In modern engineering, the term is used for any system of pipes, ditches, canals, tunnels, and other structures used for this purpose....
in the world.
By July 1905, the Times began to warn the voters of Los Angeles that the county would soon dry up unless they voted bonds
Bond (finance)
In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...
for building the aqueduct. Artificial drought conditions were created when water was run into the sewers to decrease the supply in the reservoirs and residents were forbidden to water their lawns and gardens.
On election day, the people of Los Angeles voted for $22.5 million worth of bonds to build an aqueduct from the Owens River and to defray other expenses of the project. With this money, and with a special Act of Congress allowing cities to own property outside their boundaries, the City acquired the land that Eaton had acquired from the Owens Valley farmers and started to build the aqueduct. On the occasion of the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct
Los Angeles Aqueduct
The Los Angeles Aqueduct system comprising the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, is a water conveyance system operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power...
on November 5, 1913 Mullholland's entire speech was five words: "There it is. Take it."
Boom town 1913–1941
Notable events
Swimming pool desegregation An end to racial segregation in municipal swimming pools was ordered in summer 1931 by Superior Court Judge Walter S. Gates after Ethel Prioleau, the widow of an Army major, sued the city, complaining that she, a Negro living at 1311 W. 35th Street, was not allowed to use the swimming pool in nearby Exposition ParkExposition Park
Exposition Park is the name of more than one place:*Exposition Park - a neighborhood in south Dallas, Texas*Exposition Park - A former baseball park in Kansas City...
because of her race but had to travel 3.6 miles to the "negro swimming pool" at 1357 East 22nd street. Other city pools were opened to Negroes but closed to whites one day a week. The City Council, by a vote of 6 to 6 on one occasion and 8 to 6 a week later refused to have the city attorney appeal the case.
Summer Olympics Los Angeles hosted the 1932 Summer Olympics
1932 Summer Olympics
The 1932 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the X Olympiad, was a major world wide multi-athletic event which was celebrated in 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. No other cities made a bid to host these Olympics. Held during the worldwide Great Depression, many nations...
. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, at Exposition Park, that is home to the Pacific-12 Conference's University of Southern California Trojans football team...
, which had opened in May, 1932 with a seating capacity of 76,000, was enlarged to accommodate over 100,000 spectators for Olympic events. It is still in use by the USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
Trojans football team. Olympic Boulevard, a major thoroughfare, honors the occasion.
Griffith Park fire A devastating brush fire on October 3, 1933, killed 29 and injured another 150 workers who were clearing brush in Griffith Park
Griffith Park
Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park covers of land, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America...
.
Annexations and consolidations
The City of Los Angeles mostly remained within its original 28 square-mile (73 km²) landgrant until the 1890s. The original city limits are visible even today in the layout of streets that changes from a north-south pattern outside of the original land grant to a pattern that is shifted roughly 15 degrees east of the longitudeLongitude
Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, and denoted by the Greek letter lambda ....
in and closely around the area now known as Downtown
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area...
. The first large additions to the city were the districts of Highland Park
Highland Park, Los Angeles, California
Highland Park is a neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles.-Geography:Highland Park is located along the Arroyo Seco. It is situated within what was once Rancho San Rafael of the Spanish / Mexican era...
and Garvanza
Garvanza, Los Angeles, California
Garvanza is a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles. It is generally considered a subdistrict of Highland Park.It is named for the garbanzo beans that once flourished there. Garvanza was annexed by the city in 1899....
to the north, and the South Los Angeles
South Los Angeles
South Los Angeles, often abbreviated as South L.A. and formerly South Central Los Angeles, is the official name for a large geographic and cultural portion lying to the southwest and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. The area was formerly called South Central, and is still widely known...
area. In 1906, the approval of the Port of Los Angeles and a change in state law allowed the city to annex the Shoestring, or Harbor Gateway, a narrow and crooked strip of land leading from Los Angeles south towards the port. The port cities of San Pedro and Wilmington were added in 1909 and the city of Hollywood was added in 1910, bringing the city up to 90 square miles (233 km²) and giving it a vertical "barbell" shape. Also added that year was Colegrove, a suburb west northwest of the city near Hollywood; Cahuenga
Cahuenga, California
Cahuenga or "place of the hill" is a former Tongva and Tataviam Native American settlement in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California....
, a township northwest of the former city limits; and a part of Los Feliz
Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California
Los Feliz, also Rancho Los Feliz is an affluent, hilly neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, named after its land grantee José Vicente Feliz....
were annexed to the city.
The opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct provided the city with four times as much water as it required, and the offer of water service became a powerful lure for neighboring communities. The city, saddled with a large bond and excess water, locked in customers through annexation by refusing to supply other communities. Harry Chandler, a major investor in San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
real estate, used his Los Angeles Times to promote development near the aqueduct's outlet. By referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
of the residents, 170 square miles (440 km²) of the San Fernando Valley, along with the Palms district, were added to the city in 1915, almost tripling its area, mostly towards the northwest. Over the next seventeen years dozens of additional annexations brought the city's area to 450 square miles (1,165 km²) in 1932. (Numerous small annexations brought the total area of the city up to 469 square miles (1,215 km²) as of 2004.)
Most of the annexed communities were unincorporated towns but ten incorporated cities were consolidated into Los Angeles: Wilmington
Wilmington, Los Angeles, California
Wilmington is a district of Los Angeles, with industry as its primary economic activity. It lies adjacent to the Port of Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Harbor City. Wilmington is the site of Banning House and Drum Barracks, or Camp Drum, the only major American Civil War landmark in California. The...
(1909), San Pedro
San Pedro, Los Angeles, California
San Pedro is a port district of the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was annexed in 1909 and is a major seaport of the area...
(1909), Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
(1910), Sawtelle
Sawtelle, Los Angeles, California
Sawtelle is an area partly within West Los Angeles, California, that may refer to a district that is part of the city of Los Angeles, an unincorporated area of the County of Los Angeles that by definition is not part of the municipality of Los Angeles, or may refer to a combination of these,...
(1922), Hyde Park
Hyde Park, Los Angeles, California
-History:Hyde Park is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles. It was established in 1887 as a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway's Harbor Subdivision, which ran from Downtown Los Angeles to the port at Wilmington in a westward loop.It was incorporated as a city...
(1923), Eagle Rock
Eagle Rock
Eagle Rock can refer to one of the following:Places in the United States*Eagle Rock, North Carolina, an unincorporated community in Wake County, North Carolina, west of Zebulon*Eagle Rock , a town in northern Botetourt County...
(1923), Venice
Venice, Los Angeles, California
Venice is a beachfront district on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, a two-and-a-half mile pedestrian-only promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, artists, and vendors...
(1925), Watts
Watts, Los Angeles, California
Watts is a mostly residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, California.-History:The area now known as Watts is located on the Rancho La Tajauta Mexican land grant...
(1926), Barnes City (1927), and Tujunga (1932).
Annexation references: Municipal Secession Fiscal Analysis Scoping Study www.valleyvote.net, Annexation and Detachment Map (PDF) lacity.org.
Olvera Street—an idealized Mexican past
In 1926, socialite Christine Sterling became alarmed when the City Council posted a condemn sign on the old Francisco Avila AdobeAvila Adobe
The Avila Adobe, was built in 1818 by Francisco Avila, and has the distinction of being the oldest standing residence in Los Angeles, California. It is located in the paseo of historical Olvera Street and is now a part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument, a Los Angeles State Historic Park...
near the Los Angeles Plaza. She became very dedicated to the preservation of the area and developed the idea of creating a tourist site with a romantic theme of Old Mexico.
Her efforts finally won the attention of Harry Chandler
Harry Chandler
Harry Chandler was an American newspaper publisher and investor who became owner of the largest real estate empire in the U.S.-Biography:...
of the Los Angeles Times who staged a $1000-a-plate luncheon on her behalf. Chandler also set up a for-profit business, the Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, with himself and Sterling in charge.
Chandler's interest in developing the idealized Mexican marketplace was twofold: 1. It would give him a way to control the level of free-speech activities on the Plaza and 2. it would present an image of "good Mexicans" who did not include union organizers and angry workers protesting their exploitation. Ceramic figures of a Mexican sleeping at the foot of a cactus with a sombrero over his head would symbolize the stereotype Chandler wanted to project.
Sterling and Chandler's efforts finally paid off with the opening of Olvera Street
Olvera Street
Olvera Street is in the oldest part of Downtown Los Angeles, California, and is part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. Many Latinos refer to it as "La Placita Olvera." Circa 1911 it was described as Sonora Town....
in 1930. Sterling spent the rest of her life managing the tourist attraction as a profitable business.
Civic corruption and police brutality
The downtown business interests, always eager to attract business and investment to Los Angeles, were also eager to distance their town from the syndicated crime and violence that defined the stories of Chicago and New York. In spite of their concerns, massive corruption in City Hall and the Los Angeles Police DepartmentLos Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
(LAPD)—and the fight against it—were dominant themes in the city's story from early 20th-century to the 1950s.
In the 1920s, for example, it was common practice for the city's mayor, councilmen, and attorneys to take contributions from madams, bootleggers, and gamblers. The top aide of the mayor was involved with a protection racket. Thugs with eastern-Mafia connections were involved in often violent conflicts over bootlegging and horse-racing turf. The mayor's brother was selling jobs in the LAPD.
In 1933, the new mayor Frank Shaw
Frank Shaw
Frank Shaw may refer to:*Frank H. Shaw , Pennsylvania civil engineer*Frank L. Shaw , California politician and former mayor of Los Angeles*Frank Thomas Shaw , Congressman from Maryland...
started giving out contracts without competitive bids and paying city employees to favor crony contractors. The city's Vice Squad functioned city-wide as the enforcer and collector of the city's organized crime, with revenues going to the pockets of city officials right up to the mayor.
In 1937, the owner of downtown's Clifton's Cafeteria
Clifton's Cafeteria
Clifton's Cafeteria, once part of a chain of Clifton's restaurants, is the oldest surviving cafeteria style eatery in Los Angeles, California, and the largest public cafeteria in the world. Founded in 1931 by Clifford Clinton, the name was created by combining the first half of "Clifford" and the...
, Clifford Clinton led a citizen's campaign to clean up city hall. He and other reformers served on a Grand Jury investigating the charges of corruption. In a minority report, the reformers wrote:
A portion of the underworld profits have been used in financing campaigns [of] … city and county officials in vital positions … [While] the district attorney’s office, sheriff’s office, and Los Angeles Police Department work in complete harmony and never interfere with … important figures in the underworld.
The police Intelligence Squad spied on anyone even suspected of criticizing the police. They included journalist Carey Williams, the district attorney, Judge Bowron, and two of the County Supervisors.
The persistent courage of Clinton, Superior Court Judge, later Mayor, Fletcher Bowron
Fletcher Bowron
Fletcher Bowron was the 35th Mayor of Los Angeles, California from September 26, 1938 until June 30, 1953. Until Thomas Bradley passed his length of service during the 1980s, Bowron held the distinction of having the longest tenure in that position in city history.Bowron was born in Poway,...
, and former L.A.P.D. detective Harry Raymond
Harry Raymond
Harry H. Raymond , was a Major League Baseball player who played infielder from -. He would play for the Louisville Colonels, Washington Senators, and Pittsburgh Pirates.-External links:...
turned the tide. The police became so nervous that the Intelligence Squad blew up Raymond's car and nearly killed him. The public was so enraged by the bombing that it quickly voted Shaw out of office, one of the first big-city recalls in the country's history. The head of the intelligence squad was convicted and sentenced to two years to life. Police Chief James Davis and 23 other officers were forced to resign.
Fletcher Bowron replaced Shaw as mayor in 1938 to preside over one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the city. His Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival would bring major changes to the government of Los Angeles.
In 1950, he appointed William H. Parker was sworn in as Chief of Police. Parker pushed for more independence from political pressures that would enable him to create a more professionalized police force. The public supported him and voted in charter changes that isolated the police department from the rest of government.
Through the 1960s, the LAPD was promoted as one of the most efficient departments in the world. But Parker's administration would be increasingly charged with police brutality
Police brutality
Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....
—resulting from his recruiting of officers from the South with strong anti-black and anti-Mexican attitudes.
Reaction to police brutality resulted in the Watts riots
Watts Riots
The Watts Riots or the Watts Rebellion was a civil disturbance in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The 5-day riot resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, and 3,438 arrests...
of 1965 and again, after the Rodney King
Rodney King
Rodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...
beating, in the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Charges of police brutality dogged the Department through the end of the century. In the late 1990s, as a result of the Rampart scandal
Rampart Scandal
The Rampart scandal refers to widespread corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers in the CRASH unit were implicated in misconduct, making it one of the most...
involving misconduct of 70 officers, the federal government was forced to intervene and assumed jurisdiction of the Department with a consent decree
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...
. Police reform has since been a major issue confronted by L.A.'s recent mayors.
Social critic Mike Davis has recently argued that attempts to "revitalize" downtown Los Angeles decreases public space and further alienates poor and minority populations. This enforced geographical separation of diverse populations goes back to the city's earliest days.
World War II and postwar 1941–1950
During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Los Angeles grew as a center for production of aircraft, war supplies and ammunitions. Thousands of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s and European American
European American
A European American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe...
s from the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
and the Midwest
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
migrated to the West
Western United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
to fill factory jobs.
By 1950, Los Angeles was an industrial and financial giant created by war production and migration. Los Angeles assembled more cars than any city other than Detroit
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, made more tires than any city but Akron
Akron, Ohio
Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...
, made more furniture than Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...
, and stitched more clothes than any city except New York. In addition, it was the national capital for the production of motion pictures
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
programs and, within a few years, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
shows. Construction boomed as tract houses were built in ever expanding suburban communities financed by the largess of the Federal Housing Administration
Federal Housing Administration
The Federal Housing Administration is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying...
.
Los Angeles continued to spread out, particularly with the development of the San Fernando Valley and the building of the freeways launched in the 1940s. When the local street car system went out of business, Los Angeles became a city built around the automobile, with all the social, health and political problems that this dependence produces.
The famed urban sprawl
Urban sprawl
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...
of Los Angeles became a notable feature of the town, and the pace of the growth accelerated in the first decades of the 20th century. The San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
, sometimes called "America's Suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
", became a favorite site of developers, and the city began growing past its roots downtown
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area...
toward the ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
and towards the east.
This is also the time when General Motors persuaded most urban regions in North America to shut down their light rail street car systems and replace them for more flexible, but polluting and inefficient, bus systems. This drastically changed growth and travel patterns in the city in subsequent years and contributed to the severe air pollution events that Los Angeles became famous for.
The years 1950–2000
Beginning November 6, 1961, Los Angeles suffered three days of destructive brush fires. The Bel-Air—Brentwood and Santa Ynez fires destroyed 484 expensive homes and 21 other buildings along with 15,810 acres (64 km²) of brush in the Bel-AirBel-Air, Los Angeles, California
Bel Air is an affluent residential community in the hills of the Westside of the city of Los Angeles, California. Together with Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills it forms the Platinum Triangle of Los Angeles neighborhoods....
, Brentwood
Brentwood, Los Angeles, California
Brentwood is a district in western Los Angeles, California, United States. The district is located at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, bounded by the San Diego Freeway on the east, Wilshire Boulevard on the south, the Santa Monica city limits on the southwest, the border of Topanga State...
, and Topanga Canyon
Topanga, California
Topanga is a census-designated place in western Los Angeles County, California, USA. It is located in the Santa Monica Mountains. Occupying Topanga Canyon, it is often referred to by that name. Topanga is bounded on three sides by State Park or conservancy lands, and on the south by the Pacific...
neighborhoods. Most of the homes destroyed had wooden shake roofs, which not only led to their own loss but also sent firebrands up to three miles (5 km) away. Despite this, few changes were made to the building codes to prevent future losses.
The repeal of a law limiting building height and the controversial redevelopment of Bunker Hill, which destroyed a picturesque though decrepit neighborhood, ushered in the construction of a new generation of skyscrapers. Bunker Hill's 62-floor First Interstate Building (later named Aon Center
Aon Center (Los Angeles)
Aon Center is a 62-story, Modernist office skyscraper located at 707 Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, California. Designed by Charles Luckman, and completed in 1973, the rectangular black building with white trim is remarkably slender for a skyscraper in a seismically active area. It is...
) was the highest in Los Angeles when it was completed in 1973. It was surpassed by the Library Tower (now called the U.S. Bank Tower
U.S. Bank Tower
U.S. Bank Tower, formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center, is a skyscraper at 633 West Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles, California. It is the tallest building in California, the tenth-tallest in the United States, the tallest west of the Mississippi River, and as of...
) a few blocks to the north in 1990, a 310 m (1,018 ft) building that is the tallest west of the Mississippi. Outside of Downtown, the Wilshire Corridor is lined with tall buildings, particularly near Westwood. Century City, developed on the former 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
back lot, has become another center of high-rise construction on the Westside.
During the latter decades of the 20th century, the city saw a massive increase of street gangs. At the same time, crack cocaine
Crack cocaine
Crack cocaine is the freebase form of cocaine that can be smoked. It may also be termed rock, hard, iron, cavvy, base, or just crack; it is the most addictive form of cocaine. Crack rocks offer a short but intense high to smokers...
became widely available and dominated by gangs in the 1980s. Although gangs were disproportionately confined to lower-income inner-city sections, fear knew no boundaries citywide. Since the early 1990s, the city saw a decrease in crime and gang violence with rising prices in housing
Gentrification
Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
, revitalization
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
, urban development, and heavy police vigilance in many parts of the city. With its reputation, it had led to Los Angeles being referred as "The Gang Capital of America".
A subway
Rapid transit
A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...
system, developed and built through the 1980s as a major goal of mayor Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
, stretches from North Hollywood to Union Station and connects to light rail
Light rail
Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...
lines that extend to the neighboring cities of Long Beach
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
, Norwalk
Norwalk
Norwalk is the name of several places in the United States of America:*Norwalk, California, a suburb of Los Angeles*Norwalk, Connecticut, a city in southwestern Connecticut that contains several neighborhoods including Central Norwalk, East Norwalk, South Norwalk, and West Norwalk** The Norwalk...
, and Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, among others. Also, a commuter rail system, Metrolink
Metrolink (Southern California)
Metrolink is a commuter rail system serving Los Angeles and the surrounding area of Southern California; it currently consists of six lines and 55 stations using of track....
, has been added that stretches from nearby Ventura
Ventura, California
Ventura is the county seat of Ventura County, California, United States, incorporated in 1866. The population was 106,433 at the 2010 census, up from 100,916 at the 2000 census. Ventura is accessible via U.S...
and Simi Valley
Simi Valley
Simi Valley is a synclinal valley in Southern California in the United States. It is an enclosed or hidden valley surrounded by mountains and hills. It is connected to the San Fernando Valley to the east by the Santa Susana Pass & 118 freeway, and in the west the narrows of the Arroyo Simi and 118...
to San Bernardino
San Bernardino, California
San Bernardino is a city located in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area , and serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States...
, Orange County
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
, and Riverside
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and the county seat of the eponymous county. Named for its location beside the Santa Ana River, it is the largest city in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area of Southern California, 4th largest inland California...
. The funding of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is the California state-chartered regional transportation planning agency and public transportation operating agency for the County of Los Angeles formed in 1993 out of a merger of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and the...
project is funded by a half cent tax increase added in the mid 1980s, which yields $400 million every month. Although the regional transit system is growing, subway expansion was halted in the 1990s over methane gas concerns, political conflict, and construction and financing problems during Red Line Subway project, which culminated in a massive sinkhole on Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood Boulevard
-Revitalization:In recent years successful efforts have been made at cleaning up Hollywood Blvd., as the street had gained a reputation for crime and seediness. Central to these efforts was the construction of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center and adjacent Kodak Theatre in 2001...
. As a result, the original subway plans have been delayed for decades as light rail
Light rail
Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...
systems, dedicated busways, and limited-stop "Rapid" bus routes have become the preferred means of mass transit in LA's expanding series of gridlocked, congested corridors.
The 1995 murder of Stephanie Kuhen
Murder of Stephanie Kuhen
The murder of Stephanie Kuhen in 1995 in Los Angeles created significant media attention in the United States and led to crackdowns on Los Angeles street gangs....
in Los Angeles led to condemnation from President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and a crackdown on Los Angeles-area gangs.
Proposition 14 and the battle for space
Since its beginning, the city was geographically divided by ethnicity. In the 1920s, Los Angeles was the location of the first restrictive covenants in real estate. By the Second World War, 95 percent of Los Angeles housing was off-limits to blacks and Asians. Minorities who had served in WWII or worked in L.A.'s defense industries returned to face increasing patterns of discrimination in housingHousing Segregation
Housing Segregation is the practice of denying African American or other minority groups equal access to housing through the process of misinformation, denial of realty and financing services, and racial steering. Misinformation can take the form of realtors or landlords not giving African American...
. More and more, they found themselves excluded from the suburbs and restricted to housing in East or South Los Angeles, Watts, and Compton
Compton, California
Compton is a city in southern Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The city of Compton is one of the oldest cities in the county and on May 11, 1888, was the eighth city to incorporate. The city is considered part of the South side by residents of Los...
. Such real-estate practices severely restricted educational and economic opportunities.
Historian Peter Radkowski wrote:
By the 1960s, the fair housing conflict of California would evolve into a collision of legislative action, racial backlash, and judicial ruling: the Rumford Act on the floors of the state capitol; Proposition 14 at the ballot box; Mulkey v. Reitman before the Supreme Court of California, and Reitman v. Mulkey before the Supreme Court of the United States. These events explicitly shaped a gubernatorial election in California, and arguably set in motion a sea change in political allegiances and presidential elections.
In 1955, William Byron Rumford
William Byron Rumford
William Byron Rumford was an American pharmacist and politician. He was the first African American elected to any public office in Northern California.-Family background:...
, the first black from Northern California to serve in the California State Legislature, introduced a fair-housing bill. In 1959, the California Legislature passed the California Fair Employment Practices Act sponsored by Augustus Hawkins of Los Angeles. That same year, the state's Unruh Civil Rights Act
Unruh Civil Rights Act
The Unruh Civil Rights Act is a piece of California legislation that specifically outlaws discrimination based on age, sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, or sexual orientation...
addressed fair housing but did not have any teeth. The aggrieved party had to sue to get compensation.
In 1963, California Legislature passed and Governor Pat Brown signed the Rumford Fair Housing Act which outlawed restrictive covenants and the refusal to rent or sell housing on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, or physical disability.
In reaction to the Rumford Act, a well-funded coalition of realtors and landlords immediately began to campaign for a referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
that would amend the state Constitution to protect property owners' ability to deny minorities equal access to housing. Known as Proposition 14, it caused a storm of deep and bitter controversy across the state. Radkowski wrote:
The debate over Proposition 14 cultivated a whirlwind of information and misunderstanding, marked by angry exchanges on the merits, and running through the entire debate a plague of bitterness, ill feelings, and slurs. On any given day, the effort to overturn the Rumford Act might involve highbrow jurisprudence, righteous indignation, or racial epithet. In many ways, the Rumford Act played as bawdy and violent as the land and mineral grabs of the original California Gold Rush: Rumford received an invitation to a stag dinner party—complete with one hour of “entertainment”—that was sponsored by the Associated Home Builders of the Greater East Bay; while across the state, pamphlets and pickets revealed the ugly fascist undercurrents of support for Proposition 14.
While conservatives such as Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles argued that blacks are "better off in Los Angeles than anywhere else," blacks knew that they were kept out of participating in the city's prosperity. On May 26, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told a crowd of 35,000 at Wrigley Field, "We want to be free whether we're in Birmingham or in Los Angeles."
In November, 1964, California voters passed Proposition 14 by a wide margin.
In August, 1965, the Watts Riots
Watts Riots
The Watts Riots or the Watts Rebellion was a civil disturbance in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The 5-day riot resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, and 3,438 arrests...
broke out. Lasting six days, it left 32 dead, 1,032 injured, 3,952 arrested, $40 million in damage, and 1,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. According to later reports, the riot was a reaction to a long record of police brutality by the LAPD and other injustices suffered by blacks, including discrimination in jobs, housing, and education.
In 1966, the California State Supreme Court, in Mulkey v. Reitman, ruled that Proposition 14 violated the State Constitution's provisions for equal protection and due process.
In 1967, in Reitman v. Mulkey, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the decision of the California Supreme Court and ruled that Proposition 14 had violated the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
also addressed the issue, but made few provisions for enforcement.
The U.S. Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968) introduced meaningful federal enforcement mechanisms.
Economic changes
The last of the automobile factories shut down in the 1990s; the tire factories and steel mills left earlier. Most of the agricultural and dairy operations that were still prospering in the 1950s have moved to outlying counties while the furniture industry has relocated to MexicoMexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and other low-wage nations. Aerospace production has dropped significantly since the end of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
or moved to states with better tax conditions, and the entertainment industry has found cheaper areas to produce films, television programs and commercials elsewhere in the United States and Canada. However, many studios still operate in Los Angeles, such as CBS Television City
CBS Television City
CBS Television City is a television studio complex located in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles at 7800 Beverly Boulevard, at the corner of North Fairfax Avenue...
at the corner of Fairfax Avenue
Fairfax Avenue
Fairfax Avenue is a street on north central Los Angeles, California. It runs from La Cienega Boulevard with Culver City at its southern end to Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood on its northern end.Fairfax Avenue forms the western boundary of Hancock Park as well as Park La Brea, an 160 acre ,...
and Beverly Boulevard
Beverly Boulevard
Beverly Boulevard is one of the main east-west thoroughfares in Los Angeles, California. It begins off Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills and ends on the Lucas Avenue overpass near Downtown Los Angeles to become 1st Street...
and 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
in Century City.
Those macroeconomic changes have brought major social changes with them. While unemployment dropped in Los Angeles in the 1990s, the newly created jobs tended to be low-wage jobs filled by recent immigrants and other exploitable populations; by one calculation, the number of poor families increased from 36% to 43% of the population of Los Angeles County during this time. At the same time, the number of immigrants from Mexico, Central America and Latin America has made Los Angeles a "majority minority" city that will soon be majority Latino. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.9% to 6.8% in 2002, and is around 11.6% currently.
The desire for residential housing in the downtown area has been noticed, and several historical buildings have been renovated as condos (while maintaining the original outside design), and many new apartment and condominium towers and complexes are being built.
Since the 1980s, there's been an increasing gap between the rich
American upper class
See: millionaire for more details-Millionaires:See also: MillionairesHouseholds with net worths of $1 million or more may be identified as members of the upper-most socio-economic demographic, depending on the class model used...
and the poor
American lower class
The concept of a lower class in the United States is used to describe those at or near the lower end of the socio-economic hierarchy. As with all social classes in the United States, the lower class is loosely defined and its boundaries and definitions subject to debate and ambiguous popular...
, making Los Angeles the most socioeconomically divided city in the United States.
On November 10, 2004, the Los Angeles Daily News reported plans to turn the northeast San Fernando Valley into an industrial powerhouse, which would provide new and more jobs.
Demographic changes
Many communities in Los Angeles have changed their ethnic character over time. For many decades, Los Angeles was predominantly whiteWhite American
White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...
, American-born, and Protestant until the late 20th Century. South L.A. was mostly white until the 1950s, but then became predominantly black until the 1990s, and is now mostly Latino
Hispanic and Latino Americans
Hispanic or Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain, and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.1990 Census of Population and Housing: A self-designated classification for people whose origins...
. While the Latino community within the City of Los Angeles was once centered on the Eastside
East Los Angeles (region)
East Los Angeles is the portion of the City of Los Angeles that lies east of Downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles River and the unincorporated areas of Lincoln Heights, west of the San Gabriel Valley, East Los Angeles and City Terrace, south of Cypress Park, and north of Vernon, California and...
, it now extends throughout the city. The San Fernando Valley, which represented a bastion of white flight
White flight
White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
in the 1960s and provided the votes that allowed Sam Yorty to defeat the first election run by Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
, is now as ethnically diverse
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
as the rest of the city on the other side of the Hollywood Hills
Hollywood Hills
The Hollywood Hills is an affluent and exclusive neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the southeastern Santa Monica Mountains. It is bound by Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the west, Vermont Avenue to the east, Mulholland Drive to the north, and Sunset Boulevard to the south.-Hollywood Hills...
.
By the end of the 20th century, some of the annexed areas began to feel cut off from the political process of the megalopolis, leading to a particularly strong secession movement in the San Fernando Valley and weaker ones in San Pedro and Hollywood. The referendums to split the city were rejected by voters in November 2002.
Population growth
The population of Los Angeles reached more than 100,000 with the 1900 census (Los Angeles Evening Express, October 1, 1900), more than a million in 1930, more than two million in 1960, and more than 3 million in 1990.| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 1790 | 131 |
| 1800 | 315 |
| 1810 | 365 |
| 1820 | 650 |
| 1830 | 1,300 |
| 1840 | 2,240 |
| 1850 | 1,610 |
| 1860 | 4,385 |
| 1870 | 5,730 |
| 1880 | 11,200 |
| 1890 | 50,400 |
| 1900 | 102,500 |
| 1910 | 319,200 |
| 1920 | 576,700 |
| 1930 | 1,238,048 |
| 1940 | 1,504,277 |
| 1950 | 1,970,358 |
| 1960 | 2,479,015 |
| 1970 | 2,816,061 |
| 1980 | 2,966,850 |
| 1990 | 3,485,398 |
| 2000 | 3,694,820 |
Sources: Historical Population Data of California; Historical Resident Population of Los Angeles during the Spanish & Mexican Period, 1781 to 1840
African-Americans in Los Angeles
Despite, the fact that Los Angeles is one of only U.S. major cities founded by settlers who were predominantly of African descent, the city had 2,100 Black Americans in 1900, according to census figures, and by 1920 approximately 15,000. In 1910, the city had the highest percentage of black home ownershipHomeownership in the United States
The homeownership rate in the United States in 2009 remained similar to that in other post-industrial nations with 67.4% of all occupied housing units being occupied by the unit's owner...
in the nation, with more than 36 percent of the city's African-American residents owning their own homes. Black leader W. E. B. Du Bois described L.A. in 1913 as a "wonderful place" since they were less subjected to racial discrimination due to their population being small and the ongoing tensions between Anglos and Mexicans. That changed in the 1920s when restrictive covenants that enforced segregation became widespread. Blacks were mostly confined along the South Central corridor, Watts, and small enclaves in Venice and Pacoima, which received far fewer services than other areas of the city.
After WWII, the city's black population grew in substantial numbers
Second Great Migration (African American)
The Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the North, Midwest and West. It took place from 1941, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration...
as many continued to flee from the South for better opportunities although they remained in segregated enclaves. Even after the Supreme Court banned the legal enforcement of race-oriented restrictive covenants in the Shelley v. Kraemer
Shelley v. Kraemer
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 , is a United States Supreme Court case which held that courts could not enforce racial covenants on real estate.-Facts of the case:...
case (1948), black homeownership declined severely although the population continued to increase. The city had 63,774 blacks in 1940 and by 1950, they were approximately 170,000 of the population. By 1960, Los Angeles had the fifth largest black population in the United States, larger than any city in the South.
The Watts riots
Watts Riots
The Watts Riots or the Watts Rebellion was a civil disturbance in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The 5-day riot resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, and 3,438 arrests...
of 1965 followed a minor traffic incident and lasted four days after decades of police mistreatment and other racial injustices toward blacks. Thirty-four people were killed and 1,034 injured at a cost of $40 million in property damage and looting. So many businesses burned on 103rd Street that it became known as "Charcoal Alley."
The City did help take a few steps to deal with the lack of social services for the black community, but black unemployment was relatively high following de-industrialization that closed all of the high-paying industrial jobs that opened up to black and Latino workers. Things got worse following the Watts riot – gang warfare and the drug trade reached crisis levels by the 1980s which were disproportionately high in minority communities.
By 1990, the LAPD, which had followed a para-militaristic model since Chief Parker's regime in the 1950s, became more alienated from minority communities following accusations of racial profiling. In 1992, a jury in suburban Simi Valley
Simi Valley
Simi Valley is a synclinal valley in Southern California in the United States. It is an enclosed or hidden valley surrounded by mountains and hills. It is connected to the San Fernando Valley to the east by the Santa Susana Pass & 118 freeway, and in the west the narrows of the Arroyo Simi and 118...
acquitted white Los Angeles police officers involved in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King
Rodney King
Rodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...
, the year before. After four days of rioting
1992 Los Angeles riots
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots or South Central Riots, also known as the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted three white and one hispanic Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King following a...
, more than fifty deaths, and billions of dollars of property losses, mostly in the Central City, the National Guard and the police finally regained control.
Since the 1980s, more middle-class black families have left the central core of Los Angeles to settle in other California municipalities or out of state
New Great Migration
The New Great Migration is the term for demographic changes from 1965 to the present which are a reversal of the previous 35-year trend of black migration within the United States...
. In 1970, blacks made up 18 percent of the city's population. That percentage has dropped to 10 percent in 2010 as many continue to leave to settle elsewhere. Los Angeles still has the largest black population of any city in the Western United States.
Latinos in Los Angeles
The anti-union, open-shop heritage of the Chandlers and the Los Angeles Times continued to assure Los Angeles of a steady supply of cheap labor from Mexico and Central America throughout the 20th century. This was met by the increasing opposition of anti-immigrationNativism
Nativism may refer to:* Nativism or political nativism, a term used by scholars to refer to ethnocentric beliefs relating to immigration and nationalism; antiforeignism...
forces throughout the country.
A steady migration of Mexicans to California from 1910 to 1930 expanded the Mexican and Latino population in Los Angeles to 97,116 or 7.8%. In 1930, a large repatriation of 400–500,000 Mexican immigrants and their children began after the onset of the Depression, massive unempoyment, encouragement by the government of Mexico, the threat of deportation and welfare agencies willing to pay for the tickets of those leaving (some 2 million European immigrants left as well).
At the same time, the city celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1931 with a grand "fiesta de Los Angeles" featuring a blond "reina" in historic ranchera costume. By 1940 the Latino population dropped to 7.1%, but remained at sightly over 100,000.
During World War II, hostility toward Mexican-Americans took a different form, as local newspapers portrayed Chicano youths, who sometimes called themselves "pachucos" as barely civilized gangsters. Anglo servicemen attacked young Chicanos dressed in the pachuco uniform of the day: long coats with wide shoulders and pleated, high-waisted, pegged pants, or zoot suit
Zoot suit
A zoot suit is a suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. This style of clothing was popularized by African Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Italian Americans during the late 1930s and the 1940s...
s.
In 1943, twenty-two young Chicanos were convicted of a murder of another youth at a party held at a swimming hole southeast of Los Angeles known as the "sleepy lagoon" on a warm night in August 1942; they were eventually freed after an appeal that demonstrated both their innocence and the racism of the judge conducting the trial. Today, the event is known as the Zoot Suit Riots
Zoot Suit Riots
The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots in 1943 during World War II that erupted in Los Angeles, California between white sailors and Marines stationed throughout thehi c mlc city and Latino youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored...
.
In the 1990s, redistricting led to the election of Latino members of the City Council and the first Latino members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors since its inception. In 1994, California Voters passed Proposition 187, which denied undocumented immigrants and their families in California welfare, health benefits, and education.
With the growth of the Latino community, primarily immigration from Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, but also from Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, it is now the largest ethnic bloc in Los Angeles. By 1998, Latinos outnumbered Anglos in the city by over a million and account for 50 percent of the County's population. The Latinos are re-establishing their position and visibility in the city's economic and political life. By anyone's account, Los Angeles is once again a Latino city.
City Council member Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa , born Antonio Ramón Villar, Jr., is the 41st and current Mayor of Los Angeles, California, the third Mexican American to have ever held office in the city of Los Angeles and the first in over 130 years. He is also the current president of the United States Conference of...
was elected mayor in 2005, the first Latino elected to that office since the 1872.
In 2006 anti-immigration forces supported the federal The Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (H.R. 4437). The act would make "unlawful presence" an "aggravated felony." On 25 March, a million Latinos staged La Gran Marcha on City Hall to protest the bill. It was the largest demonstration in California history. Similar protests in other cities across the country made this a turning point in the debate on immigration reform
Immigration reform
Immigration reform is a term used in political discussion regarding changes to current immigration policy of a country. In its strict definition, "reform " means to change into an improved form or condition, by amending or removing faults or abuses....
.
Asians in Los Angeles
Less than a century after the founding of Los Angeles, ChinatownChinatown
A Chinatown is an ethnic enclave of overseas Chinese people, although it is often generalized to include various Southeast Asian people. Chinatowns exist throughout the world, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, Australasia, and Europe. Binondo's Chinatown located in Manila,...
was a thriving community near the downtown railroad depot. Thousands of Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
came to northern California in the 1850s, initially to join the Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
and then taking construction jobs with the railroads. They began moving south as the transcontinental railroad linked Los Angeles with the rest of the nation. The town’s continuous Chinese presence dates from 1850, when two house servants, Ah Luce and Ah Fon, appeared in the census. The Chinese population increased to 16 in 1860 and 178 in 1870. Eighty percent of the Chinese residents then were male, and most worked as launderers, cooks and vegetable peddlers.
Later, Chinese workers who helped to build the aqueduct to the Owens River and worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley spent their winters in a segregated ethnic enclave in Los Angeles. In 1871, eleven years before the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a violent anti-Chinese demonstration swept through Los Angeles' Chinatown, killing Chinese residents and plundering their dry good stores, laundries and restaurants.
The labor vacuum created by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was filled by Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese workers and, by 1910, the settlement now known as "Little Tokyo" had risen next to Chinatown.
During the years between the two world wars, Los Angeles' Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
community also included small clusters of Korean American
Korean American
Korean Americans are Americans of Korean descent, mostly from South Korea, with a small minority from North Korea...
s and Filipinos
Filipino American
Filipino Americans are Americans of Filipino ancestry. Filipino Americans, often shortened to "Fil-Ams", or "Pinoy",Filipinos in what is now the United States were first documented in the 16th century, with small settlements beginning in the 18th century...
, the latter filling the void which followed the exclusion of the Japanese in 1924.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government authorized the evacuation and incarceration in concentration camps of all Japanese living in California irrespective of citizenship.
Since World War II, immigration from Asia and the Pacific has increased dramatically. The influx of immigrants from the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Korea, Taiwan, the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia has led to the development of identifiable enclaves such as Koreatown in the central city and Samoans in Wilmington and a Thai
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
neighborhood in Hollywood.
See also
Other articles which contain relevant history sections.
- History of Southern California freeways
- Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
- History of the Los Angeles Police DepartmentHistory of the Los Angeles Police DepartmentThe history of the Los Angeles Police Department is long and complex.- Early history :California Gold Rush Los Angeles was known for its violence, gambling and "vice" and lack of effective civil law enforcement. It was reputed to have the highest murder rate in the United States at the time and...
- Los Angeles Fire Department History
- History of the San Fernando Valley to 1915History of the San Fernando Valley to 1915The history of the San Fernando Valley from its exploration by the 1769 Portola expedition to the annexation of much of it by the City of Los Angeles in 1915 is a story of booms and busts, as cattle ranching, sheep ranching, large-scale wheat farming, and fruit orchards flourished and faded...
- Port of Los AngelesPort of Los AngelesThe Port of Los Angeles, also called Los Angeles Harbor and WORLDPORT L.A, is a port complex that occupies of land and water along of waterfront. The port is located on San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, approximately south of downtown...
- History of Santa MonicaHistory of Santa Monica, CaliforniaThe history of Santa Monica, California, covers the significant events and movements in Santa Monica's past.-Population by decade:* 1880 - 417* 1890 - 1,580* 1900 - 3,057* 1910 - 7,847* 1920 - 15,252* 1930 - 37,146* 1940 - 53,500* 1950 - 71,595...
- History of Glendale
- History of Beverly Hills
- History of Long Beach
Articles on specific events in Los Angeles history
- Battle of Los AngelesBattle of Los ÁngelesThe Battle of Los Ángeles was a military action fought on March 22, 1880 between the Chilean and Peruvian armies during the Tacna and Arica Campaign of the War of the Pacific...
- California Water WarsCalifornia Water WarsThe California Water Wars were a series of conflicts between the city of Los Angeles, farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California, and environmentalists. As Los Angeles grew in the late 1800s, it started to outgrow its water supply. Fred Eaton, mayor of Los Angeles, realized that...
- Los Angeles mayoral election, 2005Los Angeles mayoral election, 2005The 2005 Los Angeles mayoral election took place on March 8, 2005, with a runoff election on May 17. Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa defeated the sitting mayor, James Hahn, becoming the city’s first Hispanic mayor since the 19th century...
Sources
- Spanish and Mexican history Source: University of Southern California Project: Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future, 1996. Adopted by the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.
Guides, architecture, geography
- Herman, Robert D. Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide (2004) 270 pages
- Fodor. Los Angeles: plus Disneyland & Orange County ed. by Maria Teresa Burwell, (2007) 368 pages excerpt and text search
- Mahle, Karin, and Martin Nicholas Kunz. Los Angeles: Architecture & Design (2004) 191pp
- Nelson, Howard J. The Los Angeles Metropolis. (1983). 344 pp. geography
- Pitt, Leonard and Dale Pitt. Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County. (1997). 605 pp. short articles by experts excerpts and text search
Contemporary issues
- Abu-Lughod, Janet L. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities (1999) online edition
- Dear, Michael J., H. Eric Schockman, and Greg Hise, eds. Rethinking Los Angeles (1996) interprets LA in terms of "postmodern urbanism" model. It consists of several fundamental characteristics: a global-local connection; a ubiquitous social polarization; and a reterritorialization of the urban process in which hinterland organizes the center (in direct contradiction to the Chicago School model of cities). The resultant urbanism is distinguished by a centerless urban form termed "keno capitalism."
- Fine, David. Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction. (2000). 293 pp.
- Flanigan, James. Smile Southern California, You're the Center of the Universe: The Economy and People of a Global Region (2009) excerpt and text search
- Fulton, William. The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles. (1997). 395 pp.
- Gottlieb, Robert. Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City (2007) excerpt and text search
- Scott, Allen J. and Soja, Edward W., eds. The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century. (1996). 483 pp.
History
- Bills, Emily, “Connecting Lines: L.A.’s Telephone History and the Binding of the Region,” Southern California Quarterly, 91 (Spring 2009), 27–67.
- Bollens, John C. and Geyer, Grant B. Yorty: Politics of a Constant Candidate. (1973). 245 pp. Mayor 1961–73
- Fogelson, Robert M. The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (1967), focus on planning, infrastructure, water, and business
- Friedricks, William. Henry E. Huntington and the Creation of Southern California (1992), on Henry Edwards Huntington (1850–1927), railroad executive and collector, who helped build LA and Southern California through the Southern Pacific railroad and also trolleys.
- Garcia, Matt. A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970. (2001). 330 pp.
- Hart, Jack R. The Information Empire: The Rise of the Los Angeles Times and The Times Mirror Corporation. (1981). 410 pp.
- Jaher, Frederic Cople. The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. (1982). 777 pp.
- Klein, Norman M. and Schiesl, Martin J., eds. 20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict. (1990). 240 pp.
- Lavender, David. Los Angeles, Two Hundred Years. (1980). 240 pp. heavily illustrated popular history
- Leader, Leonard. Los Angeles and the Great Depression. (1991). 344 pp.
- Mullins, William H. The Depression and the Urban West Coast, 1929–1933: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. (1991). 176 pp.
- Nicolaides, Becky M. My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965. (2002). 412 pp.
- O'Flaherty, Joseph S. An End and a Beginning: The South Coast and Los Angeles, 1850–1887. (1972). 222 pp.
- O'Flaherty, Joseph S. Those Powerful Years: The South Coast and Los Angeles, 1887–1917 (1978). 356 pp.
- Payne, J. Gregory and Ratzan, Scott C. Tom Bradley: The Impossible Dream. (1986). 368 pp., mayor 1973 to 1993 and a leading African American
- Raftery, Judith Rosenberg. Land of Fair Promise: Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885–1941. (1992). 284 pp.
- Rolle, Andrew. Los Angeles: From Pueblo to City of the Future. (2d. ed. 1995). 226 pp.; the only historical survey by a scholar
- Sitton, Tom and Deverell, William, eds. Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s. (2001). 371 pp.
- Verge, Arthur C. Paradise Transformed: Los Angeles during the Second World War. (1993). 177 pp.
- Verge, Arthur C. "The Impact of the Second World War on Los Angeles" Pacific Historical Review 1994 63(3): 289-314. 0030-8684 in JSTOR
Planning, environment and autos
- Bottles, Scott L. Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City. (1987). 302 pp.
- Davis, Margaret Leslie. Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles. (1993). 303 pp.
- Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. (1990). 462 pp
- Desfor, Gene, and Roger Keil. Nature And The City: Making Environmental Policy In Toronto And Los Angeles (2004) 290pp
- Deverell, William, and Greg Hise. Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles (2006) 350 pages excerpt and text search
- Dewey, Scott Hamilton. Don't Breathe the Air: Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945–1970. (2000). 321pp., focuses on LA smog
- Hise, Greg. Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis. (1997). 294 pp.
- Jacobs, Chip, and William Kelly. Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles (2008)
- Keane, James Thomas. Fritz B. Burns and the Development of Los Angeles: The Biography of a Community Developer and Philanthropist. (2001). 287 pp.
- Longstreth, Richard. The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941. (1999). 248 pp.
- Longstreth, Richard. City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950. (1997). 504 pp.
- Mulholland, Catherine. William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles. (2000). 411 pp. online edition
- Post, Robert C. Street Railways and the Growth of Los Angeles (1989). 170pp.
- Rajan, Sudhir Chella. The Enigma of Automobility: Democratic Politics and Pollution Control. (1996). 202 pp.
Hollywood
- Balio, Tino. Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939. (1993). 483 pp.
- May, Lary. The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000)
- Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. (1988). 492 pp.
- * Smith, Catherine Parsons. Making Music in Los Angeles: Transforming the Popular. University of California Press, 2007. (A social history covering c. 1887–1940)
- Vaughn, Stephen. Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics. (1994). 359 pp.
- Wells, Walter. Tycoons and Locusts: A Regional Look at Hollywood Fiction of the 1930s (1973) online edition
Ethnicity, race and religion
- Abelmann, Nancy and Lie, John. Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots. (1995). 272 pp.
- Acuña, Rodolfo F. Anything but Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles. (1996). 328 pp.
- Allen, James P. and Turner, Eugene. The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California. (1997). 282 pp.
- Bedolla, Lisa García. Fluid borders: Latino power, identity, and politics in Los Angeles (2005) 278 pages; excerpt and text search
- Cannon, Lou. Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD. (1997). 698 pp. online edition
- Degraaf, Lawrence B. "The City of Black Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto, 1890–1930". Pacific Historical Review 1970 39(3): 323–352. in JSTOR
- Engh, Michael E.Michael EnghMichael Eric Engh is an American Jesuit, academic and historian. he has served as the President of Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, since January 5, 2009.-Biography:Engh is a third generation Californian...
"'A Multiplicity and Diversity of Faiths': Religion's Impact on Los Angeles and the Urban West, 1890–1940," Western Historical Quarterly 1997 28(4): 462–492. 0043-3810 in JSTOR - Engh, Michael E.Michael EnghMichael Eric Engh is an American Jesuit, academic and historian. he has served as the President of Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, since January 5, 2009.-Biography:Engh is a third generation Californian...
Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple, and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846–1888. (1992). 267 pp. - Greenwood, Roberta S., ed. Down by the Station: Los Angeles Chinatown, 1880-1933. (1996). 207 pp.
- Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History. (1979). 217 pp.
- Gutierrez, Ramon A., and Patricia Zavella, eds. Mexicans in California: Transformations and Challenges essays by leading scholars (2009)
- Hamilton, Nora and Chinchilla, Norma Stoltz. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. (2001). 296 pp.
- Hayashi, Brian Masaru. "For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren": Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942 (1995). 217 pp.
- Horne, Gerald. Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s. (1995). 424 pp.
- Keil, Roger. Los Angeles: Globalization, Urbanization, and Social Struggles. (1998). 295 pp.
- Leclerc, Gustavo; Villa, Raúl; and Dear, Michael, eds. Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en L.A. (1999). 214 pp.
- Loza, Steven. Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles. (1993). 320 pp.
- Min, Pyong Gap. Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles. (1996). 260 pp.
- Modell, John. The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900–1942. (1977). 201 pp.
- Monroy, Douglas. Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression. (1999). 322 pp.
- Moore, Deborah Dash. To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. (1994). 358 pp.
- Oberschall, Anthony. "The Los Angeles Riot of August 1965," Social Problems, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter, 1968), pp. 322–341 in JSTOR, black riots in Watts
- Ong, Paul, ed. The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring. (1994). 330 pp.
- Ríos-Bustamante, Antonio and Castillo, Pedro. An Illustrated History of Mexican Los Angeles, 1781-1985. (1986). 196 pp.
- Saito, Leland T. Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb. (1998). 250 pp.
- Sánchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. (1993). 367 pp. online edition
- Sides, Josh. L. A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (2003) online edition
- Valle, Victor M. and Torres, Rodolfo D. Latino Metropolis. (2000). 249 pp.
- Waldinger, Roger and Bozorgmehr, Mehdi, eds. Ethnic Los Angeles. (1996). 497 pp. studies by sociologists
- Weber, Francis J. Magnificat: The Life and Times of Timothy Cardinal Manning. (1999). 729 pp. The Catholic archbishop from 1970 to 1985.
- Weber, Francis J. His Eminence of Los Angeles: James Francis Cardinal McIntyre. (1997). 707 pp. Catholic archbishop from 1948 to 1970.
- Weber, Francis J. Century of Fulfillment: The Roman Catholic Church in Southern California, 1840–1947. (1990). 536 pp.
Primary sources
- Caughey, John and LaRee Caughey, eds. Los Angeles: Biography of a City. (1976). 510 pp. short excerpts from primary and secondary sources
- Diehl, Digby, ed. Front Page: 100 Years of the Los Angeles Times, 1881-1981. (1981). 287 pp.
- Rodríguez, Luis. Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993); autobiographical novel online edition
- Violence in the City—An End or a Beginning?, A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965 Official Report online, report on 1965 black riot in Watts; called the "McCone Report" after its chairman
External links
- Los Angeles in the 1900s, a collection of newspaper articles and illustrations from 1900 through 1909
- Famous Fires of the LAFD
- Historic Cemeteries of Los Angeles
- Los Angeles: Early Days – slideshow by Life magazine
- Wilshire Wonders: A History of Wilshire Boulevard (kcet.org)
- 1947 project After one year dedicated to 1947, the "1947 project" blog shifted its focus to 1907 in L.A.
- City streets that existed in 1903–4 but are no longer extant