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.
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.
Why People Visit 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.
