Talk:History of Los Angeles, California

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Contents

[edit] Suggestion

Wonderful contribution ; thanks ! :) Nerval 10:38 AM PST 4/8/2004


I think that this article could be improved with a little re-organization. In particular, there are several sections of chronologic history that can be put in orderly sequence with the special topics placed at the end. In the chronology there is almost nothing between 1906 and the end of WWII, a period which certainly saw a lot of history being made, so even just a heading that covers the period may generate contributions. If no one objects, I'll make the changes without altering the text. Will McW 05:21, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've added a paragraph on the annexations, just using bare facts from a city publication. I've avoided getting into all the political/commercial forces involved, and I hope that we can add more about that in the future. (Wikilinking L.A. communities sure is a chore! [Playa del Rey, Los Angeles, California|Playa del Rey] -whew!) -Willmcw 06:47, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Is this something we could create a template for? Something where {LA|Playa del Rey} expands to [Playa del Rey, Los Angeles, California|Playa del Rey]? gK ¿? 08:02, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The original name of LA

Mmanning 06:22, 28 January 2006 (UTC)Mmanning: According to what I have learned from members at the office of the El Pueblo Park, the original name was:

"El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles sobre El Rio Porciúncula," which translates "...on the Porciuncula River."

From what I understand, the original Porciuncula River is in Spain, and the name itself is Italian. Gen. Portola named this river he found (the Los Angeles River) in its honor, and had left specific instructions for where this new Pueblo was to be situated, mostly for the access to the river's water. This was all part of a master plan on behalf of the King of Spain to gentrify Alta California, and downplay the role of the missions as the New World commercial centers. Of course the mission padres ignored the idea of being downplayed and began to compete against the new pueblos. So the idea in another part of this article that the settlers of Pueblo de Los Angeles came from the San Gabriel Mission is sorely misdirected. Remember, shortly after the revolution, the missions were secularized in order to break up the competition, plus the fact that the padres would maintain allegiance to the Church of Spain.

The original 22 families to settle the Pueblo were sent up from Monterey Mexico, and were a cross-section of the Mexican population from Spanish to Mulato to Negro. The residents at the mission were Native American Gabrielenos and the padres.

A lot more can be said about Olvera Street which is the outline of the original Pueblo. More can be said about the Avila Adobe which has a historical tale second to no other building in Los Angeles.

I've been told to research my sources for this, and I will. I invite any remarks to this. Thank you. User:Mmanning

Magi Media 00:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)Magi Media

I found better answers to the naming of Los Angeles. First off, the land of the yet-to-be-settled pueblo was discovered during the Portola Expedition of 1769 with the Franciscan fathers Junipero Serra and and Juan Crespi. They discovered the river which Portola named El Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. This was a dedication to the Italian location of Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order. So the river was known as the Porciuncula, and the town (Pueblo) was built on that, thus sobre el Porciuncula. So there's no real translation of Porciuncula as "the smaller portion." Porciuncula is a place in Italy, and over here it's a river.
Father Crespi saw a great place for a settlement which would become L.A. But Serra saw a place to set up a Mission, the Whittier Narrows. That was fine until it flooded and had to be moved to its present location in 1771. But the Mission and The Pueblo were established independently.
King Carlos ordered the establishment of the Pueblo in 1781 with the ideas I stated in the above dissertation, gentrify the new lands and downplay the commercial role of the Missions. The San Gabriel Mission was a gathering place for these, count 44 people: 11 men, 11 women and 22 children. They were a mixed batch from Mexico who were to specifically inhabit the new Pueblo for the purpose of farming provisions for the increasing Spanish Army in Alta California. This was a military agenda, not a religious agenda.
As a matter of fact, a complete layout design was prepared for the new Pueblo before anyone ever got there.
If no one has any further discussion about this, I would like to integrate it into the history base of this article.
Source: University of Southern California Project: Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future, 1996. Adopted by the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.
Magi Media 00:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)Magi Media

[edit] merge to LA history

It should not be merged; this is a mission, not a city. It can be added to L.A. category if not already there. Thanks Hmains 04:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jews in the early days of Los Angeles

I know that Jews, such as Harris Neumark were early pioneers in Los Angeles in the 1840s and had a major influence on the foundations of Los Angeles from its early days as a cowtown, serving as merchants, bankers, sayers, shippers, and realtors, but does anyone have sources for this not very well known topic (though expect many of the museums in Southern California, such as the Gene Autry to have a lot on this topic in the next year or two). Valley2city 03:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] GOOD or FEATURED article

This looks pretty darn good (or at least long). What can be done to bring it up to GA or FA status? —ScouterSig 23:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The biggest problem is a serious lack of references. If you want to know the specifics about the criteria for GA & FA status, see Wikipedia:What is a good article? & Wikipedia:What is a featured article?. BlankVerse 09:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spewing Wikislop across the Internet

Here's another reason why it's important to double check your sources before putting anything in a Wikipedia article: there are lots of websites that pull content from these articles, and a mistake here ends up on all of them. I just had to fix an astonishing mistake here. The article had something to say about a "Fred Eden" who had been a mayor of L.A. and was involved in the development of the aqueduct from Owens Valley. No, no, no! The man's name was Fred Eaton, and as you can see, there's even a Wikipedia article about him. It would have been so easy for the original writer to double check this name! I don't know how this mistake ended up in Wikipedia, but a Google search on "Fred Eden" will now fetch any number of sites that have repeated it- including a page which appears to be part of an official L.A. County web site.[1] That particular site contains quite a few lines identical to those in this article misnaming Fred Eaton. In fact, I don't know if that site copied them from here, or if this article is in part cut and pasted from that site, but either way there's a problem when misinformation gets onto a Wikipedia page. This isn't the first time I've had to fix something like this, and I have no idea how many such errors go undetected. I checked the earlier versions of this article, and the "Eden" mistake was part of it when it was moved from the main Los Angeles article by jengod...in March of 2004! How could this have been wrong for so long? And for how long will uncorrected versions of it persist on the Internet? Something to think about. Whyaduck 14:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's my favorite example of lazy editors writing what they think is correct, rather than writing what they have verified is correct. Artesia, California has a fairly famous retail section refered to as Little India, so of course the city "is notable for its large Indian-American community". Bull Crap! As you can see from my correction [2], there were only 4.6% Asian Indians in Artesia in the 2000 census. BlankVerse 15:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Author needs to check sources on claims that GM "persuaded" cities to shut down their rail systems. There is a lot more background to this story that needs to be fairly looked at for a more unbiased article. (blaming all of LA's smog problems on GM is inaccurate statement.)

[edit] Annexations

The last annexation mentioned was in 1932, which brought the city's area to 450 sq. miles. Today, its area is 469 sq. miles. When were the additional 19 sq. miles added to the city? -98.221.133.96 (talk) 11:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Good point. It's hard to succinctly summarize the later annexations, many of which were just fractions of an acre. The largest were the annexations of Chatsworth, in several stages. The annexations are well sourced in an L.A. City PDF map, at [3] I've changed the text slightly to reflect that there were more annexations after 1932. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)