FIVE-MINUTE HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES This place on earth is usually under the ocean. Every few million years rock pushes up to feel the sun. Mountains and lowlands change like slow clouds. Long ago the island of California touched here. As it sank a new west coast arrived. Soon big animals came to romp and sink, until twenty thousand years ago, when mastodon met man. Asians had crossed arctic ice to move here. They lived naked, covered with flowers from an endless rose bowl. They danced the porpoise dance and slept in the sun. Their word for ocean was "wow.‘ After several thousand years these first people saw a huge boat pass. Two hundred years later, in 1769, more strangers came walking. The outlanders built a farm school and taught indians Spanish ways to pray and work In 1781 another group of settlers started a village called EI Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. Some of the villagers became ranchers and filled hills with cattle. Their quiet happy decades of rodeos, fiestas, siestas and serenades were spiced with revolts against Mexican law. Then in 1847 the American military seized Los Angeles and California. The Gold Rush of 1849 brought plenty Yankees fast. By 1870 they dominated the pioneers. Californio families were taxed from their lands. Pastures and thickets were torn out for wheat. Indians died of disease. Eager Anglo landlords chopped vast ranchos into city sizes, subdivided these to home lots and challenged "every human being to come to southern California on the next train." New Englanders followed glowing ads to the sunny subtropic. Midwesterners fled stormy prairies. Japanese emigrated to earn farms. Blacks sought a better South. During the 1880*s thousands planted orchards, relaxed on porches and watched fruit color.
By the 20th century a tenth-million people feasted on local food and shipped the surplus east. As the population doubled, again doubled and again, speedy trolleys spread newcomers from mountains to ocean. To build and crop further the exploding city needed more water. Wells were going deep and salty. in 1915 five thousand laborers opened a giant aqueduct 233 miles long which captured northern water from Owens Valley; killing cities there and enabling Los Angeles County to become the greatest garden in the United States. Angelenos lived snug amid two million orange trees, five million grapevines and other millions of all food from almonds to zucchini. Manufacturing for World War One triggered the Roar of the Twenties. Loud gushers smeared the air. Petroleum propelled automobiles to prim bungalows beyond streetcar routes. Moviemaking gave the nation mass drama and the city its spangled crown. Worldwide business collapse in the Thirties brought uprooted jobless here, to be jobless but warm. Then Los Angeles was roused by a second World War, in 1941, to fight as Americas capital of weaponry and smog. Postwar industry lured war veterans. Harvests were trampled by the swiftest housebuilding yet. The Great Walls of Los Angeles’ freeway system grew to link 2,000 square miles of humans. Factories clanged, tools made tools. Rockets, televisions, and cars whirled from assembly lines. Luxuries tumbled to consumers consuming for the pleasure of consumption. Today, lights of this basin beam far into space, signaling our premiere as the most adventurous city on earth, inviting our next adventure. Amazing Los Angeles History Calendar 1982