Historic Hollywood

CHAPTER I
C ALIFORNIA’ S S PANISH H ERITAGE
1851-1910
On a summer evening in September 1781, a band of foot-sore travelers from Mexico gathered
beside a little river to dedicate a settlement they had trekked 1,000 miles to establish. With
appropriate ceremony, they gave it the name of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de
Porciuncula (the town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of Porciuncula), which soon became
popularly known as El Pueblo and in time, Los Angeles.
The founding of the pueblo was part of a last ditch effort by the king of Spain to colonize
California, remotest of outposts, and to protect it from seizure by Czarist Russians moving down from
Alaska. Padres from New Spain (Mexico), who preceded the colonists by a dozen years, founded
missions at San Diego in 1769 and San Gabriel in 1771, Christianized the Indians and trained them
in crafts. The new pueblo was planned to supplement the production of the missions and to reduce
the need for importing foodstuffs to support the colony, and it soon was producing almost as much
as Mission San Gabriel, by then a prodigious agricultural success.
In 1784 the provincial governor awarded grazing lands to three veterans of the army of occupation and
set a pattern to be followed by subsequent governors who gave away nearly all of California, known as the
Rancho land grants. By 1846, California was ripe for seizure by the first military power to reach it.
American Army scouts and war vessels began to appear, and by the time the war between the United States
and Mexico had broken out, American forces were already in the province or waiting on the outskirts. By
1848, after several skirmishes, the area was ceded to the United States and Los Angeles became an
American city.
❖
Prospect Avenue (Hollywood
Boulevard) as seen in the center of
this photograph when the population
of Hollywood was only seven hundred
in 1905. Looking south, the
Hollywood Hotel can be seen at
Highland Avenue to the left and
Orange Drive to the right where the
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel now
stands. Union High (Hollywood High
School) is the domed building topcenter.
Chapter I ✦ 5