LA Expansion History

Another map. This one shows the history of Los Angeles annexations and land purchases up until 1916. A lot of cool details in this map. California became a state September 9th, 1850, but the cession treaty treaty with Mexico was signed in 1848. So it shouldn't be a surprise that LA was incorporated April 4th, 1850, a few months before CA became an actual state. The original borders of LA were just 4 sq Spanish leagues. That grant was signed back in 1781 by the Spanish crown. BTW, 4 sq Spanish leagues is apparently 28.01 square miles. So that's a pretty big square.

There were two southern extensions, and one western, before 1900. Also added before 1900, Highland Park and Garvanza. Garvana was named for the Garbanzo beans that used to grow there (delicious hummus), and everyone knows Highland Park. Also just before the turn of the century was the annexation of land being used by USC.

However, after all that land grabbing became the moment which begat the area I've been focusing on. In 1906, LA annexed a 18 square mile shoestring of land leading down to the port. Then on August 28, 1909, LA consolidated the cities of Wilmington and San Pedro.

Jose Dominguez was a Spanish soldier, who was granted a tract of land for cattle grazing. The grant in 1784 was seventeen Spanish leagues, much bigger than LA. After the cession, Dominguez' grant was rehonored by President James Buchanan in 1858, but the land was disputed between the Dominguez and Sepulveda families. Dominguez got a Cal State University named after them, Sepulveda got the road outside my house that follows the coast up to the valley.

But seriously, apparently in 1882 the land was divided up into seventeen parcels, two of which must have been the already existing cities of Wilmington and San Pedro. Wilmington was founded in 1858 by Phineas Banning (what a great founder name, he got a High School) who named the town after his hometown in Delaware. He was a transportation and shipping magnate.

The declaration of San Pedro as a foreign port of entry with its own customhouse to collect tariffs came from Washington DC, and Banning made preparations. He built the breakwater, a railroad, and dredged the harbor. There were also naval develops in the area going way back.

Anyhow, this is all to say, the story is not LA saw potential in the harbor and jumped on it. Fifty years of work was done at the harbor with money from three families, and LA scrambled to buy the Shoestring Addition to make the city contiguous, and then consolidated with San Pedro and Wilmington.

Hollywood is the only other city listed on the map as consolidated, in 1910. One month after that consolidation, D.W. Griffith would make the first film in Hollywood, called "In Old California". There's a great book called "American Lightning" that delves into the history of this event, how films struggled to gain legitimacy in New York, how LA was this anti-union town, and how the LA Times building was bombed.

The map also shows LA's largest annexation, the 1915 addition of the San Fernando valley. This also comes up in American Lightning, as well as the movie Chinatown. The purchasing of water from the Owen Valley to irrigate San Fernando desert and build homes on it, making millions off the sale of land to this new immigrants to Los Angeles.

Anyhow, those are just things that came to me, I was inspired to look up, etc, by looking at an old map. Pretty cool, huh : )