Los Angeles California — Retro Vintage History

What's with the 44? That is how many people founded Los Angeles. On September 4, 1781, forty-four settlers the Spanish called los pobladores, "the townspeople," finished a journey of more than a thousand miles from the Mexican provinces of Sonora and Sinaloa and laid out an adobe farming village on the river. They were one of the most diverse founding parties in early America: of the 44, most were of African, Native, and mixed ancestry, and only two were of fully European descent. The second-largest city in the United States started as a village of forty-four — and their families are still here.

The pobladores did not arrive on empty land. The Tongva people had lived in the basin for centuries, and the village of Yaanga stood near the chosen site. Under the Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, the eleven founding families built their pueblo beside the Porciúncula — the Los Angeles River — raising crops to supply the nearby presidios and missions. A flood washed the first riverside settlement away around 1815, and the town was rebuilt a little higher, at the Old Plaza that anchors El Pueblo to this day.

What's with "the Queen of the Angels"? The nickname City of Angels is not a modern invention — it is older than the United States' hold on California. The pueblo's full name was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, the Town of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, given for a Marian feast day. Over two centuries the town outgrew the long Spanish name, but the "Angels" stayed: Los Angeles has been the City of Angels since 1781, and everything that came later simply borrowed it.

The village grew through the eras. Mexican independence reached Alta California in 1821, opening the rancho years; Los Angeles was incorporated as an American city on April 4, 1850, the year California joined the Union. Cattle gave way to vineyards, then citrus, then oil, and the small pueblo on the river spread across a coastal plain ringed by the Santa Monica, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana mountains until it became the metropolis we know — yet the Plaza, the Plaza Church, and the names of the founders are all still there at El Pueblo.

Our Los Angeles retro logo carries California's grizzly bear and lone star — the emblem of the old California Republic — set over "1850," the year of statehood. Rendered black-and-white with the worn look of a vintage crate label or a roadside sign, it is rugged and authentic rather than glossy. The bear and star bridge the city's two stories: the adobe pueblo on the river and the state it helped build, a fitting mark for heritage worn rather than hung on a wall.

Today Los Angeles is a city of millions, but its oldest streets still trace four square leagues laid out around a plaza in 1781. Our Los Angeles designs gather that founding story — the City of Angels, the 1781 pueblo, and Los Pobladores — and pair it with vintage Southern California styling: sunshine, palms, mountains meeting the coast. From a 1781 adobe pueblo to the City of Angels — wear a little of Los Angeles's real beginning, not its billboard.

Los Angeles California — Travel Guide

Visiting Los Angeles California Today

Beyond the freeways and the postcards, the oldest part of Los Angeles is small, walkable, and free — the founding pueblo is still standing at the center of the city.

Heritage, Plazas & Coast in Los Angeles California

For visitors searching for things to do in Los Angeles, California:

• Walk Olvera Street and the Old Plaza at El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the founding site and oldest section of the city.
• Step inside the Plaza Church — Our Lady Queen of the Angels, "La Placita" — and see the Avila Adobe (1818), the city's oldest standing house.
• Find the 1781 founders monument at the Plaza, which names all 44 pobladores by name, age, and origin.
• Trace the Los Angeles River, the Porciúncula the settlers built beside.
• Look up at the Santa Monica and San Gabriel ranges that ring the coastal plain — the mountains-meet-coast view that defines Southern California.

Why People Visit Los Angeles California

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.

For deeper reading on the Los Angeles, California history described here — the Tongva "Yaanga" shore, the 1781 founding of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles under Governor Felipe de Neve, Los Pobladores and their multiethnic heritage, the City of Angels name, the rebuilding at the Old Plaza, and the Mexican and American eras — it may be useful to consult (1) the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, (2) the Los Angeles Public Library California and local-history collections, (3) the California State Library and the California Historical Society, (4) the Los Angeles City Archives and Records Management Division, and (5) the Los Angeles City Historical Society. For travel and visitor information, it may be useful to contact (1) the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, (2) Visit California, (3) the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, (4) the El Pueblo monument visitor center, and (5) the regional transportation and airport information desks.