The city's oldest nickname 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 kept by the Franciscans, who had named the river for it twelve years before the settlers arrived. 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.
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.
