Los Angeles: history and heritage

About Los Angeles: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Los Angeles Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by 44 settlers of Native American, African and Spanish ancestry, and it has been a city of mixed origins ever since. A small pueblo by a river grew, through oil, water, railroads and films, into a vast metropolis where more than two hundred languages are spoken.

At a glance

Population: 3,898,747 in the City of Los Angeles and 10,014,009 in Los Angeles County (US Census Bureau, 2020 Census); nearly half of Angelenos are Hispanic or Latino.

Names: El Pueblo de la Reina de los Ángeles, founded on 4 September 1781.

Founded by 44 settlers of Native American, African and Spanish ancestry, Los Angeles has always been a mixed city.

Peoples: the Tongva and Chumash; Spanish and Mexican Californios; and Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Armenian, Filipino, Iranian, Thai, Salvadoran and many other communities.

Shaped by: Spain (1781–1821), Mexico (1821–1848), the United States, the railroads, oil, the Los Angeles Aqueduct (1913) and the film industry.

The Tongva

The Tongva lived in villages across the Los Angeles basin for thousands of years; Yaanga stood near today’s downtown. Their descendants live in the region still, and many place names, from Cahuenga to Topanga, come from their language.

El Pueblo

On 4 September 1781 forty-four settlers, the pobladores, founded the pueblo by the Los Angeles River. Their ancestry was Native American, African and Spanish. El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, around Olvera Street, keeps the Avila Adobe (1818), the city’s oldest surviving house, and the Plaza Church.

Mexican Los Angeles

After 1821 Los Angeles was part of Mexico, the centre of a region of cattle ranchos. It passed to the United States in 1848, but Mexican culture has never left: Mexican Americans are the city’s largest community, and Boyle Heights and East LA are among its most vibrant neighbourhoods.

Oil, water and rail

The railroads arrived in 1876 and 1885, oil was struck in 1892, and in 1913 the Los Angeles Aqueduct, engineered by William Mulholland, brought water from the Owens Valley. The city grew explosively, spreading by streetcar and later freeway across the basin.

Hollywood

Film-makers came from the East from the 1910s for the light and the space, and Hollywood became the capital of world cinema. The Hollywood sign went up in 1923, the TCL (Grauman’s) Chinese Theatre opened in 1927, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in 2021.

A city of communities

Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Koreatown, Thai Town, Little Armenia and Historic Filipinotown tell the city’s migrations. Griffith Observatory (1935), the Getty Center (1997), Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and LACMA show its cultural ambition.

Our advice: start at El Pueblo and Olvera Street, take the Metro to Little Tokyo, and end the day at Griffith Observatory for the view over the whole basin at sunset.

Sources

Population: US Census Bureau, 2020 Census. History: El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument; Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Los Angeles Public Library; Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

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