Annual Report - Chief Executive Office - Los Angeles County

County of Los Angeles Annual Report 2006-2007
Los Angeles and its surrounding territories were built by
immigrants. The village of Los Angeles was a fairly cosmopolitan
place early on. By the 1850s settlers included English, French,
Basques, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Germans, and by the 1870s
some 200 Chinese lived in the city as well. During the late 1800s
and early 20th Century, foreign immigration to Los Angeles County
was varied but continued to be steady. The new immigrants arrived
from Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. Distinctive
ethnic communities of Japanese, Chinese, Russians, and East
European Jews had developed throughout the county by the 1930s.
When the Immigration Act of 1965 opened the door to new
immigrants, it initiated dramatic changes in the area. According to
the U.S. Census, by 2000 36.2 percent of the residents of Los
Angeles County were foreign-born—more than triple the 11.3
percent figure of 1970. The 2000 census showed the area was
home to 4.2 million people of Latino/Hispanic origin—only Mexico
City had a larger number. A survey taken by the Los Angeles
Unified School District that year counted more than 130 different
languages represented among school-age children. By 2000 Los
Angeles became the nation’s major immigrant port of entry,
supplanting New York City.
Railroads and Growth
The coming of the railroads changed everything. The Southern
Pacific completed its Los Angeles route in 1880, followed by the
Santa Fe Railroad six years later. With a huge investment in their
new coast-to-coast rail lines and large Los Angeles land holdings,
the railroads set forth a long-term plan for growth. Southern
California citrus farming was born. Tourism and the building of
towns were promoted to attract investors, to raise land values, and
to increase the value of railroad shipments.
In the late 1860s there was a population boom as the marketing to
“Go West” caught on. Thousands of tourists and land speculators
hurried to Los Angeles County. Lots were bought, sold and traded,
and an almost instantly created industry of real estate agents
transacted more value in land sales than the county's entire value
of only a few years before. The boom proved to be a speculative
frenzy that collapsed abruptly in 1889. Many landowners went
broke. People in vast numbers abandoned the Los Angeles area,
sometimes as many as 3,000 a day. This flight prompted the
creation of the chamber of commerce, which began a worldwide
advertising campaign to attract new citizens. The county as a
whole, however, benefited. The build-up had created several local
irrigation districts and numerous civic improvements. In addition,
the Los Angeles population had increased from about 11,000 in
1880 to about 60,000 in 1890.
Black Gold
In 1850 the first salable petroleum in California was the oil found at
Pico Canyon near San Fernando. But the real boom began in the
1890s, when Edward L. Doheny discovered oil at 2nd Street and
Glendale Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles. His find set off a
“second black gold rush” that lasted several years. Los Angeles
became a center of oil production in the early 20th Century. By
1897 the area had 500 derricks, and in 1910 the area near Santa
Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue was an unruly oil
shantytown. Drilling activity in the county reached new heights in
the 1920s when major finds were made in Whittier, Montebello,
Compton, Torrance, and Inglewood. The largest strikes were in
Huntington Beach in 1920, and Santa Fe Springs and Signal Hill in
1921. These three huge fields upset national oil prices and glutted
existing storage facilities. By the turn of the century almost 1,500 oil
wells operated throughout Los Angeles. Oil production has
continued down to the present throughout the Los Angeles Basin;
between 1952 and 1988 some 1,000 wells pumped 375 million
barrels of oil from these pumps.
Agriculture
In the early 1900s, agriculture became an important part of the
economy. The growth in the City of Los Angeles necessitated the
annexation of the large San Fernando Valley. For about a half
century between San Fernando's 1874 founding and the 1920s, the
community was considered an "agricultural gem" set in the San
Fernando Valley. An ample and reliable water supply was coupled
with a coastal valley climate, in which the community's elevation of
about 1,100 feet—along with its receiving about 12 inches of rain a
year—made it ideal for growing crops.
Cattle ranching was common in the area when missionaries arrived
in the late 1700s, but during the next 100 years the landscape
became dotted with wheat plantings and fruit trees, whose growth
was also aided by the irrigation systems in place from the mission's
heyday. By the 1920s, fruit and especially citrus cultivation was San
Fernando's biggest industry. The price of land for orange and lemon
groves went as high as $5,000 an acre—as much as eight times
more than the cost of other land—and the city had at least four
packing houses with annual shipments of nearly 500 rail cars of
oranges and lemons.
Olives also flourished in the Mediterranean-like climate, and the
2,000-acre Sylmar olive grove—then the world’s largest—
produced 50,000 gallons of olive oil and 200,000 gallons of ripe
olives. Other crops grown in the County included alfalfa, apricots,
asparagus, barley, hay, beans, beets, cabbage, citrus, corn, lettuce,
melons, peaches, potatoes, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, and
walnuts. The area also had excellent dairy farms, including the
world's largest Guernsey herd in the 1920s. The agricultural output
led to other industries such as canning companies, a fruit growers
association, and fruit preservers. The agricultural land gave way to
development following World War II.
Harbors and Trade
The San Pedro harbor became operational in the late 1840s and
became the principal harbor for the trade in the county. The first
steamer to visit San Pedro was the Goldhunter in 1849. The
construction of a railroad from Los Angeles to the harbor in 1869
gave a fresh impetus to the development of agricultural resources
in the county. Later in 1911 the Long Beach harbor was established
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