On the 4th of September 1781, a group of 44 settlers known as Los Pobladores founded a town they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula, a name so long it was rarely spoken in full. These settlers, mostly of mixed African, Indigenous, and European ancestry, arrived in the Los Angeles Basin to establish a small ranch town that would eventually become the second-most populous city in the United States. The site they chose was the village of Yaanga, meaning place of the poison oak, which had been the historic center of power for the Tongva people for centuries before the Spanish arrived. The Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo had claimed the area for the Spanish Empire in 1542, but it was not until 1769 that Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí reached the present site of the city. The settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. The city was incorporated as a municipality on the 4th of April 1850, five months before California achieved statehood, and it became part of the United States following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The area that became Los Angeles was originally inhabited by the indigenous Tongva people and later claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542. The city was founded on the 4th of September 1781, under Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, on the village of Yaanga. It became a part of the First Mexican Empire in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican, American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and became part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on the 4th of April 1850, five months before California achieved statehood. The discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The city was further expanded with the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, which delivers water from Eastern California. Los Angeles has a diverse economy with a broad range of industries. It is the global hub of film and television production, though its share has suffered historic declines since the COVID-19 pandemic. It has one of the busiest container ports in the Americas, and despite a business exodus from downtown Los Angeles, the city's urban core is evolving as a cultural center with the world's largest showcase of architecture designed by Frank Gehry. In 2024, the Los Angeles metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of over $1.295 trillion, making it the city with the third-largest GDP in the world, after New York and Tokyo. Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984, and will also host in 2028.
Oil Water And The Great Expansion
The discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city, transforming it from a sleepy ranch town into a booming industrial center. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, and by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. The city was further expanded with the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, which delivers water from Eastern California. The aqueduct, under the supervision of William Mulholland, ensured the continued growth of the city. Because of clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent cities and communities felt compelled to join Los Angeles. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000, putting pressure on the city's water supply. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland, ensured the continued growth of the city. Because of clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent cities and communities felt compelled to join Los Angeles. The city created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On the 14th of September 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones. The new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were prohibited. The proscriptions included barns, lumber yards, and any industrial land use employing machine-powered equipment. These laws were enforced against industrial properties after the fact. These prohibitions were in addition to existing activities that were already regulated as nuisances. These included explosives warehousing, gas works, oil drilling, slaughterhouses, and tanneries. The Los Angeles City Council also designated seven industrial zones within the city. However, between 1908 and 1915, the Los Angeles City Council created various exceptions to the broad proscriptions that applied to these three residential zones, and as a consequence, some industrial uses emerged within them. There are two differences between the 1908 Residence District Ordinance and later zoning laws in the United States. First, the 1908 laws did not establish a comprehensive zoning map as the 1916 New York City Zoning Ordinance did. Second, the residential zones did not distinguish types of housing; they treated apartments, hotels, and detached single-family housing equally. In 1910, Hollywood merged into Los Angeles, with 10 movie companies already operating in the city at the time. By 1921, more than 80 percent of the world's film industry was concentrated in L.A. The money generated by the industry kept the city insulated from much of the economic loss suffered by the rest of the country during the Great Depression. By 1930, the population surpassed one million. In 1932, the city hosted the Summer Olympics.
During World War II, Los Angeles was a major center of wartime manufacturing, such as shipbuilding and aircraft. Calship built hundreds of Liberty Ships and Victory Ships on Terminal Island, and the Los Angeles area was the headquarters of six of the country's major aircraft manufacturers. During the war, more aircraft were produced in one year than in all the pre-war years since the Wright brothers flew the first airplane in 1903, combined. Manufacturing in Los Angeles skyrocketed, and as William S. Knudsen, of the National Defense Advisory Commission, put it, We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible. After the end of World War II Los Angeles grew more rapidly than ever, sprawling into the San Fernando Valley. The expansion of the state owned Interstate Highway System during the 1950s and 1960s helped propel suburban growth and signaled the demise of the city's privately owned electrified rail system, once the world's largest. As a consequence of World War II, suburban growth, and population density, many amusement parks were built and operated in this area. An example is Beverly Park, which was located at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega before being closed and substituted by the Beverly Center. In the second half of the 20th century, Los Angeles substantially reduced the amount of housing that could be built by drastically downzoning the city. In 1960, the city had a total zoned capacity for approximately 10 million people. By 1990, that capacity had fallen to 4.5 million as a result of policy decisions to ban housing through zoning. Racial tensions led to the Watts riots in 1965, resulting in 34 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. In 1969, California became the birthplace of the Internet, as the first ARPANET transmission was sent from the University of California, Los Angeles to Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park. In 1973, Tom Bradley was elected as the city's first African American mayor, serving for five terms until retiring in 1993. Other events in the city during the 1970s included the Symbionese Liberation Army's South Central standoff in 1974 and the Hillside Stranglers murder cases in 1977, 1978. In early 1984, the city surpassed Chicago in population, thus becoming the second-largest city in the United States. In 1984, the city hosted the Summer Olympic Games for the second time. Despite being boycotted by 14 Communist countries, the 1984 Olympics became more financially successful than any previous, and the second Olympics to turn a profit; the other, according to an analysis of contemporary newspaper reports, was the 1932 Summer Olympics, also held in Los Angeles. Racial tensions erupted on the 29th of April 1992, with the acquittal by a Simi Valley jury of four Los Angeles Police Department officers captured on videotape beating Rodney King, culminating in large-scale riots. In 1994, the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake shook the city, causing $12.5 billion in damage and 72 deaths. The century ended with the Rampart scandal, one of the most extensive documented cases of police misconduct in American history.
The Creative Capital And The Port
Los Angeles is often billed as the creative capital of the world because one in every six of its residents works in a creative industry and there are more artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, dancers and musicians living and working in Los Angeles than any other city at any other time in world history. The city's Hollywood neighborhood has been recognized as the center of the motion picture industry, having held this distinction since the early 20th century, and the Los Angeles area is also associated with being the center of the television industry. The city is home to major film studios as well as major record labels. Los Angeles plays host to the annual Academy Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Grammy Awards, as well as many other entertainment industry awards shows. The city is the site of the USC School of Cinematic Arts which is the oldest film school in the United States. The Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of over $1.0 trillion, making it the third-largest economic metropolitan area in the world, after New York and Tokyo. Los Angeles has been classified an alpha world city according to a 2012 study by a group at Loughborough University. Los Angeles is home to three Fortune 500 companies: AECOM, CBRE Group, and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. Other companies headquartered in Los Angeles and the surrounding metropolitan area include The Aerospace Corporation, California Pizza Kitchen, Capital Group Companies, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Dine Brands Global, DreamWorks Animation, Dollar Shave Club, Fandango Media, Farmers Insurance Group, Forever 21, Hulu, Panda Express, SpaceX, Ubisoft Film & Television, The Walt Disney Company, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Warner Music Group, and Trader Joe's. The contiguous ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together comprise the busiest port in the United States by some measures and the fifth busiest port in the world, vital to trade within the Pacific Rim. The Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of over $1.0 trillion, making it the third-largest economic metropolitan area in the world, after New York and Tokyo. Los Angeles has been classified an alpha world city according to a 2012 study by a group at Loughborough University. Los Angeles is home to three Fortune 500 companies: AECOM, CBRE Group, and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. Other companies headquartered in Los Angeles and the surrounding metropolitan area include The Aerospace Corporation, California Pizza Kitchen, Capital Group Companies, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Dine Brands Global, DreamWorks Animation, Dollar Shave Club, Fandango Media, Farmers Insurance Group, Forever 21, Hulu, Panda Express, SpaceX, Ubisoft Film & Television, The Walt Disney Company, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Warner Music Group, and Trader Joe's. At the end of the second quarter of 2024, Los Angeles saw an office space vacancy rate of 31.5%, a 33.5% increase year-over-year Retail vacancy stood at 8.6%, a 15% increase year-over-year.
The Polyglot Population And The Climate
According to data in 2023 from the United States Census Bureau Los Angeles's population is 47.2% Hispanic or Latino, 28.3% non-Hispanic White, 8.5% Black, 12.0% Asian, 1.2% Native American and 0.1% Pacific Islander. Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Tehrangeles, Little Tokyo, Little Bangladesh, and Thai Town provide examples of the polyglot character of Los Angeles. Mexican ancestry makes up the largest origin among descendants of American countries other than the United States at 31.9% of the city's population, followed by those of Salvadoran and Guatemalan heritage. Descendants of Mexicans and Central Americans have long-established communities in Los Angeles and are spread throughout the entire city and its metropolitan area. It is most heavily concentrated in regions around Downtown, such as East Los Angeles, Northeast Los Angeles and Westlake. The largest Asian ethnic groups are Filipinos and Koreans, which have their own established ethnic enclaves. Chinese people, which make up 1.8% of Los Angeles's population, reside mostly outside of Los Angeles city limits, in the San Gabriel Valley of eastern Los Angeles County, but make a sizable presence in the city, notably in Chinatown. Chinatown and Thaitown are also home to many Thais and Cambodians, which make up 0.3% and 0.1% of Los Angeles's population, respectively. The Japanese comprise 0.9% of the city's population and have an established Little Tokyo in the city's downtown, and another significant community of Japanese Americans is in the Sawtelle district of West Los Angeles. Indians make up 0.9% of the city's population. Vietnamese make up 0.5% of Los Angeles's population. Los Angeles is also home to Caucasian and Middle Eastern communities, such as Armenians, Assyrians, and Iranians, many of whom live in enclaves like Little Armenia and Tehrangeles. African Americans have been the predominant ethnic group in South Los Angeles, which has emerged as the largest African-American community in the western United States since the 1960s. The neighborhoods of South Los Angeles with highest concentration of African Americans include Crenshaw, Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, Hyde Park, Gramercy Park, Manchester Square and Watts. Since the 1990s, the growing cost of living in the city has most impacted the African American population. African Americans are the fastest declining population in the city, and many of the formerly predominantly African American neighborhoods have become much more diverse. There is also a sizable Eritrean and Ethiopian community in the Fairfax region. Los Angeles has the second-largest Mexican, Armenian, Salvadoran, Filipino, and Guatemalan populations by city in the world, the third-largest Canadian population in the world, and has the largest Japanese, Iranian/Persian, Cambodian, and Romani populations in the country. The Italian community is concentrated in San Pedro. Most of Los Angeles's foreign-born population were born in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines and South Korea. Los Angeles has a two-season semi-arid climate with dry summers and very mild winters, but it receives more annual precipitation than most semi-arid climates, narrowly missing the boundary of a Mediterranean climate. Daytime temperatures are generally temperate all year round. In winter, they average around 58 degrees Fahrenheit. Autumn months tend to be hot, with major heat waves a common occurrence in September and October, while the spring months tend to be cooler and experience more precipitation. Los Angeles has plenty of sunshine throughout the year, with an average of only 35 days with measurable precipitation annually. Temperatures in the coastal basin exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit on a dozen or so days in the year, from one day a month in April, May, June and November to three days a month in July, August, October and to five days in September. Temperatures in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys are considerably warmer. Temperatures are subject to substantial daily swings; in inland areas, the difference between the average daily low and the average daily high is over 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The average annual temperature of the sea is 62 degrees Fahrenheit, from 58 degrees in January to 66 degrees in August. Hours of sunshine total more than 3,000 per year, from an average of 7 hours of sunshine per day in December to an average of 12 in July. Due to the mountainous terrain of the surrounding region, the Los Angeles area contains a large number of distinct microclimates, causing extreme variations in temperature in close physical proximity to each other. For example, the average July maximum temperature at the Santa Monica Pier is 72 degrees Fahrenheit whereas it is 82 degrees in Canoga Park, 15 miles away. The city, like much of the Southern Californian coast, is subject to a late spring/early summer weather phenomenon called June Gloom. This involves overcast or foggy skies in the morning that yield to sun by early afternoon. More recently, statewide droughts in California have further strained the city's water security. Downtown Los Angeles averages 15 inches of precipitation annually, mainly occurring between November and March, generally in the form of moderate rain showers, but sometimes as heavy rainfall during winter storms. Rainfall is usually higher in the hills and coastal slopes of the mountains because of orographic uplift. Summer days are usually rainless. Rarely, an incursion of moist air from the south or east can bring brief thunderstorms in late summer, especially to the mountains. The coast gets slightly less rainfall, while the inland and mountain areas get considerably more. Years of average rainfall are rare. The usual pattern is a year-to-year variability, with a short string of dry years of rainfall, followed by one or two wet years with more than 20 inches. Wet years are usually associated with warm water El Niño conditions in the Pacific, dry years with cooler water La Niña episodes. A series of rainy days can bring floods to the lowlands and mudslides to the hills, especially after wildfires have denuded the slopes. Both freezing temperatures and snowfall are extremely rare in the city basin and along the coast, with the last occurrence of a reading at the downtown station being the 29th of January 1979; freezing temperatures occur nearly every year in valley locations, while the mountains within city limits typically receive snowfall every winter. The greatest snowfall recorded in downtown Los Angeles was on the 15th of January 1932. While the most recent snowfall occurred in February 2019, the first snowfall since 1962, with snow falling in areas adjacent to Los Angeles as recently as January 2021. Brief, localized instances of hail can occur on rare occasions, but are more common than snowfall. At the official downtown station, the highest recorded temperature is 113 degrees Fahrenheit on the 27th of September 2010, while the lowest is 28 degrees Fahrenheit, on the 4th of January 1949. Within the City of Los Angeles, the highest temperature ever officially recorded is 121 degrees Fahrenheit, on the 6th of September 2020, at the weather station at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Woodland Hills. During autumn and winter, Santa Ana winds sometimes bring much warmer and drier conditions to Los Angeles, and raise wildfire risk.
The Gang Capital And The Homeless Crisis
In 1992, the city of Los Angeles recorded 1,092 murders. Los Angeles experienced a significant decline in crime in the 1990s and late 2000s and reached a 50-year low in 2009 with 314 homicides. This is a rate of 7.8 per 100,000, down from 1980, when it was 34.2. In 2021, murders rose to their highest rate since 2008, although by 2024, the spike had receded. In 2015, it was revealed that the LAPD had been under-reporting a category of crime between 2005 and 2012, making the rate in the city appear lower than it was for that period. The Dragna crime family and Mickey Cohen dominated organized crime in the city during the Prohibition era and reached its peak during the 1940s and 1950s with the Battle of Sunset Strip as part of the American Mafia, but has gradually declined since then with the rise of various black and Hispanic gangs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the city is home to 45,000 gang members, organized into 450 gangs. Among them are the Crips and Bloods, which are both African American street gangs that originated in the South Los Angeles region. Latino street gangs such as the Sureños, a Mexican American street gang, and Mara Salvatrucha, which has mainly members of Salvadoran descent, as well as other Central American descendants, all originated in Los Angeles. This has led to the city being referred to as the Gang Capital of America. As of January 2024, there are 45,252 homeless people in the City of Los Angeles, comprising roughly 60% of the homeless population of LA County. This is a 2.2% decrease from the previous year. The epicenter of homelessness in Los Angeles is the Skid Row neighborhood, which contains 8,000 homeless people, one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States. The increased homeless population in Los Angeles has been attributed to lack of housing affordability and to substance abuse. Almost 60 percent of the 82,955 people who became newly homeless in 2019 said their homelessness was because of economic hardship. In Los Angeles, black people are roughly four times more likely to experience homelessness. The city has had a rich and influential Protestant tradition. The first Protestant service in Los Angeles was a Methodist meeting held in a private home in 1850, and the oldest Protestant church still operating, First Congregational Church, was founded in 1867. In the early 1900s the Bible Institute Of Los Angeles published the founding documents of the Christian Fundamentalist movement and the Azusa Street Revival launched Pentecostalism. The Metropolitan Community Church also had its origins in the Los Angeles area. Important churches in the city include First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, Bel Air Presbyterian Church, First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, West Angeles Church of God in Christ, Second Baptist Church, Crenshaw Christian Center, McCarty Memorial Christian Church, and First Congregational Church. The Hollywood region of Los Angeles also has several significant headquarters, churches, including the Celebrity Center of the Church of Scientology. Because of Los Angeles's large multi-ethnic population, a wide variety of faiths are practiced, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Bahá'í, various Eastern Orthodox Churches, Sufism, Shintoism, Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese folk religion and countless others. Immigrants from Asia, for example, have formed several significant Buddhist congregations, making the city home to the greatest variety of Buddhists in the world. The first Buddhist joss house was founded in the city in 1875. Atheism and other secular beliefs are also common, as the city is the largest in the Western U.S. Unchurched Belt. In 2002, Mayor James Hahn led the campaign against secession, resulting in voters defeating efforts by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood to secede from the city. In 2022, Karen Bass became the city's first female mayor, making Los Angeles the largest U.S. city to have ever had a woman as mayor. In January 2025, a series of devastating wildfires caused by severe winds swept through Southern California, with the Pacific Palisades fire causing widespread destruction in Los Angeles's northwestern community of Pacific Palisades, with many calling it the most destructive in the history of the city of Los Angeles. In June 2025, the city experienced protests and riots following raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Los Angeles is being targeted by the Trump administration over its sanctuary city status sending in hundred of federal agents to target the immigrant community of the city. Trump sent in the Army National Guard and US Marines without the consent of local governments. Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games, making Los Angeles the third city to host the Olympics three times.