Los Angeles History

The city of Los Angeles has its origins in 1781 when Filipe de Neve established the first permanent Spanish settlement, El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles, the Los Angeles plain. Lured to the settlement by promises of rich agricultural benefits, the colonists, however, found no navigable rivers or natural harbors (the geographic advantages that traditionally had provided the impetus for early urban development). Instead, the handful of settlers began to develop the region themselves, digging canals for irrigation and building roads (both of which would become ubiquitous symbols of the basin). Over the next several decades the region developed slowly and by the mid-nineteenth century few would have fathomed that fledgling Los Angeles would grow into one of the most diverse and populous regions in the world.

While not technically a desert, the city of Los Angeles lacked any significant source of water, particularly in the dry summer months. Historically, the intermittent Los Angeles River and various wells had provided just enough water for the tiny community to bud. But as the city began to expand at the turn of the twentieth century, the water supply became a growing concern. In a series of underhanded negotiations (many of which would have made Ken Lay cringe) a vast system of aqueducts, aquifers, pipes, and pumps brought water to LA and quenched the metropolis's mounting thirst, allowing it to blossom in the arid basin.

The movie business, Los Angeles's hallmark industry, has its beginnings in the first decades of the twentieth century as filmmakers began to migrate to sunny Southern California, specifically for its climate. Film production in the era before soundstages needed lots of light and stable weather, commodities often in short supply in the industrial Northeast where the motion picture industry had thrived in its infancy. Hollywood's superb conditions caused film production to rapidly develop topping out at an average of 750 feature films in the 1930s, during the height of the Depression. But those numbers began to flicker as television brought the first serious challenge to the dominance of the theatre; by the 1950s average production had fallen to bellow 300 films per year. But just as Hollywood had captured the film industry, it eventually began to dominate Los Angeles television production, stealing the stage from New York yet again to become the most influential worldwide capital of visual entertainment.

Los Angeles weather brought more than just directors and actors, as engineers and pilots soon followed since the aviation industry also found the stable temperatures suitable for the testing and production of aircraft, a fact which helped ensure Los Angeles was able to weather the Great Depression and make it a critical manufacturing site during the Second World War. The enigmatic Howard Hughes made his home in Los Angeles where he made his mark in both the film and aviation industries. His Hercules Aircraft, nicknamed the Spruce Goose by its detractors, was built and had its first (and only) flight in Los Angeles County.

In the fall of 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed along the Southern California coast and, as he approached what would become San Pedro Bay, took note of the palpable haze filling the Los Angeles basin. As a result of his observations, he aptly dubbed the area La Baia de los Fumos, the Bay of Fumes. Even in the earliest days of human settlement, the air of Los Angeles posed challenges to its inhabitants. The meteorological phenomenon known as inversion (hot air trapping cool air) has typified the Los Angeles basin since time immemorial, and if the hundreds of Gabrileno (or Tongva) campfires could generate enough particles to inspire Cabrillo's name for the region, industrialization would obviously pose a problem.

In July of 1943, with wartime production at its peak, the people of Los Angeles began to complain of sore eyes, throats and other respiratory ailments. Los Angeles launched numerous investigations into the source of the unknown irritant. Citizens mobilized in unprecedented numbers demanding regulatory controls and several local air control agencies were established. In the end, it was discovered that the Mediterranean climate and warm Southern California sunshine, both things that lured so many people to the region, were the primary culprits with mass automobile usage significantly adding to the problem. The Los Angeles basin, again, proved a difficult place for a metropolis to thrive; yet through extensive regulatory measures most of the deleterious effects have been controlled.

With all these air quality concerns in the City of Angels, it shouldn't surprise many that one can see more hybrid automobiles around than any other place in the United States.

Early 20th century Los Angeles, despite its lack of access to traditional stimuli for economic growth, grew in a similar way to its sisters throughout the country. The first two decades of the century saw extensive construction of streetcars as a means of mass transit, yet Los Angeles did not take the traditional next step toward elevated or submerged train systems.

Los Angeles underwent some of its greatest periods of growth during the decades following the turn of the 20th century, later than its other American siblings. This delayed development meant the automobile was a viable alternative to other forms of transit whereas it had not been elsewhere. The Southern California sunshine, which would helped make the Los Angeles basin such a poor environment for heavy emissions, made it the perfect place for the early adoption of the temperamental automobile; the inconveniences posed by primitive automobiles in every other major US city were nonexistent in Los Angeles and, as a result, by 1923 there were 430,000 automobiles registered in the city - one car for every three people.

The huge concentration of automobiles bustling about beneath the San Gabriel Mountains ensured that traffic soon became a huge problem and by the late 1930s, with almost a million cars on the road, LA County floated plans for a new type of motorway. By 1940, Los Angeles County had its first freeway connecting the city to Pasadena. In 1948, the great four-level interchange known as "The Stack" was completed around the civic center and a tangled web of raised asphalt began to weave itself through the metropolis over the next few decades creating LA's iconic freeway maze.

Los Angeles, it has been said, is 100 suburbs looking for a city. While that might be a slight exaggeration, downtown LA is certainly more of a conurbation than a proverbial coeur de force for the surrounding municipalities; but it is the innumerable unique and disjointed boroughs that lend a distinct exceptionality to the city.

This pattern of development owes much to LA's relatively late development into a modern metropolis and the availability of both automobiles and post-World War II subsidized Los Angeles mortgages that drove demand for the new suburban lifestyle. Los Angeles' wide-open geography only exacerbated the pattern as well as the abundance of high-speed freeways that had been built in conjunction with new housing developments. Moreover, the diversified heavy industry that had emerged at the turn of the century ensured that each region developed their own economic centers with their own distinct characteristics.

Bret Easton Ellis (famed author of American Psycho) once commented, "people are afraid to merge on the freeways of Los Angeles," paying tribute to the highly individualistic society created by LA's decentralized nature—everyone traveling to their private single-family homes in their own private automobiles.

Yet despite its individual emphasis, Los Angeles has grown into one of the most diverse communities in the world and is truly one of the great proverbial melting pots. Any visitor to its broad dusty plain, resting between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Pacific, would note that the reluctance to merge always gives way to the desire to travel along the great roadways of Los Angeles.