Los Angeles, the heart of Southern California, has become a world-class city in the last century. From the old La Brea tar pits to the latest hotels and cultural attractions, read on for a timeline of Los Angeles' incredible history. The discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city, and it was further expanded with the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. Around 38,000 BC, Los Angeles has been drawing visitors for tens of thousands of years, as a fossil from the future is trapped inside what are now the La Brea tar pits. The Chumash settled in the Los Angeles Basin around 8000 BC, and the Tatavians (later Fernandenos) inhabited what is now the San Fernando Valley around 300 BC.
Around 500 AD, Tongva Indians settled in the Los Angeles Basin. The Portuguese navigator Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to explore the region in 1542, but it wasn't until 1769 that Gaspar de Portolá established a Spanish outpost in the Los Angeles area. He calls today's San Pedro Bay the “Bay of Smokes”. Villagers name the local river Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciuncula (Rio de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles de Porciuncula).
Los Angeles really started to grow around the First World War and steadily densified during World War II. It then spread in the 1970s and continues to grow today. The city originally lacked some of the essential components associated with city status, such as a natural harbor. However, it overcame natural deficiencies and established itself as an important center of trade, agriculture, tourism and industry.
For more than a century, it has been indelibly associated with a mild climate, a wide range of outdoor leisure and recreation, as well as with the special celebrity aura associated with Hollywood. The lifestyle of Los Angeles residents (who call themselves Angelinos) is based on cars, idealizes single-family housing and favors informality. With notable exceptions, the horizon is mostly horizontal rather than vertical. Los Angeles is a place of extraordinary ethnic and racial diversity, which is largely due to immigration, and like other cities in the world, reflects a growing divide between rich and poor.
Air quality in the Los Angeles Basin has steadily improved since then, and ozone levels have dropped to approximately one-third of 1975 levels. In 1881, after years of expanding the “manifest destiny” of the United States, Southern Pacific Railroad completed a road to Los Angeles which linked the city to the rest of the United States. After years of clandestine business, bribery and other mischief, Superintendent William Mulholland inaugurated the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913 with the following words: “There it is”. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, thousands of Japanese and American citizens of Japanese origin were detained in the Los Angeles area and interned in inland camps.
Griffith was one of the first directors to film in the Los Angeles area, attracted by its mild climate and low salaries of non-union workers. In the 1920s furious residents of Owens Valley expressed anger against Los Angeles by dynamiting parts of its water system which they believed had been stolen from them. Race riots erupted again in 1965 during Watts riots and were at center of 1991 Rodney King beating and Los Angeles riots that followed. The hordes of 49ers residents who flocked to California depended on beef and other foods from ranches and farms in Los Angeles area.
Inspired by weekly cycle path in Bogotá CicLAvia temporarily closes streets to car traffic and opens them for Angelenos to use as public park. The 30,000-square-foot food emporium and retail market continues its mission to celebrate Los Angeles' myriad cuisines and cultures. So many ethnic Thais live in Los Angeles (approximately 80,000), which is sometimes referred to as 77th province of Thailand.
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