The village grew through the eras. Mexican independence reached Alta California in 1821, opening the rancho years, when cattle hides moved through the port and land was measured in leagues rather than lots. Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city on April 4, 1850, the year California joined the Union, with a population of about sixteen hundred. Cattle gave way to vineyards — the city was California's first wine region — then to citrus, then to oil, and the pueblo spread across a coastal plain ringed by the Santa Monica, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana mountains.
What's with Anna May Wong? One of those arrival stories produced a film pioneer. She was born in Los Angeles in 1905, the daughter of a laundryman on North Figueroa Street, and grew up between her family's business and the city's old Chinatown. She talked her way onto film sets as a teenager and by the mid-1920s was the first Chinese American movie star — then spent a career pushing against the narrow parts the studios offered her, leaving for London and Berlin in 1928 to find better ones and returning as an international name. In 1951 she became the first Asian American to lead a United States television series. In 2022 the United States Mint honored her on a quarter in the American Women Quarters Program, the first Asian American to appear on U.S. currency.
Why People Visit Los Angeles
Travelers come for the climate, the coast, and the culture, but the quietest surprise is the history: a two-hundred-and-forty-year-old pueblo tucked into the middle of a modern metropolis. History and everyday life sit side by side here in a way few American cities can match, and the founding block asks nothing but a walk.
