1. Local Context: Walnut and the Southern California Metropolis
Geography 8
Local Context: Walnut and the Southern California Metropolis

2. Keywords Natural harbor Coastal plain Inland valleys Pre-1500 history
Gabrielenos
Gaspar de Portola
Benchlands
Pueblo
Alta California
Land grants, ranchos
Export-oriented agriculture
John Rowland and William Workman
Gold rush
Population change
Transcontinental RR
Speculative real-estate development
Henry Huntington
Red car, Pacific Electric Railway
Doheny, Standard Oil, Unocal
Alameda corridor

3. WALNUT, CA
Los Angeles grew in a unique location, unlike other modern cities not located near coast nor port nor waterway.
Instead grew in extensive coastal plain and inland valleys near fresh water sources like the Los Angeles River.

4. Los Angeles Region pre-1500

5. Spanish arrive in 1542 but don’t explore northern colonial lands until 1769.
Gaspar de Portola’s exploration route—he identifies the LA River as a promising site.

6. The Los Angeles pueblo is founded in 1781.
Self-sufficient agricultural society.
Catholic missions, military presidios.
Pueblo of Los Angeles, 1820
LA Pueblo becomes capital of Alta
California after Mexican independence.
Big changes—shift to more global trade and issuing of land grants.

7. The globally oriented ranchos.
Export-oriented: wheat, wool, cattle hides, citrus, wine.
Sepulveda Family
Machado Family
Dominguez Family
Walnut:
Rancho San Jose
Rancho Los Nogales
Rancho La Puente—John Rowland & William Workman, 1842.
Rowland & Workman’s land grant expands from initial 18,000 acres to almost 50,000 acres.

8. In 1870, nearly 85% of the state’s population is located in the northern 2/3 of the state.

9. Even in 1900 most live north of Monterey.
Soon the south looks appealing:
--Southern Pacific RR completed in 1876
--health tourism vacation destination
--exotic foods and crops
--retirement
--the middle-class Rivera or Italy
--speculative real-estate development begins

12. Los Angeles surpasses San Francisco in size in 1910
Los Angeles surpasses San Francisco in size in Los Angeles City Hall, built in 1920s. Reflects the growing economic importance of Los Angeles by the 1920s.

13. Los Angeles’s Economic Dominance
Oil Industry
“Golden Age” of the automobile
Cars are affordable
Oil is affordable
Freeways/Roads being built
Doheny—big oil executive, founds Beverly Hills in 1890
Standard Oil and Unocal are others located in So Ca.
Henry Huntington (Huntington Beach, Huntington Gardens…) another big oil executive.

14. Los Angeles’s Economic Dominance
Manufacturing
Good climate and cheap land
Water and energy also plentiful and cheap (country’s only municipally owned water/power)
And…cheap labor! (Latinos, and working-class whites who are “slaves to the bungalow”)
Auto manufacturing: Ford, General Motors. LA 2nd largest producer of cars and rubber tires by the 1920s
Also steel, food processing, oil refineries
Creates a new residential geography for the city: white blue-collar neighborhoods along the Alameda Corridor
Long Beach Ford Plant, 1930.

15. The Pacific Electric Railway.
An intraurban railway, helped promote a diffused, decentralized landscape. Henry Huntington bought it and extended it to remote areas to make that distant land more valuable (speculation!).
Los Angeles in many ways, decidedly anti-urban.
City’s residents vote to sell-off the right of ways and dismantle the railway. See no need for it.

16. Sierra Madre Red Car station, 1908.

17. Los Angeles’s Economic Dominance
Hollywood—Entertainment Industry
Arrives by the 1910s from the east coast.
Better climate, avoid patents owned by Edison on Nickelodeons
Becomes crucial to the economy of the region: tax base, major employer, major land owner.
Unlike manufacturing and oil, this industry thrives on selling an idea about this place.
That image is sent to the rest of the country and world.

19. Fashionable Bunker Hill.

20. Los Angeles– 3.94 million
San Diego– 1.3 million
San Jose– 930,000
San Francisco– 800,00
Long Beach– 495,000
Fresno– 465,000
Sacramento– 450,000
Oakland– 414,000
Santa Ana– 354,000
Anaheim– 350,000

21. Historical Population of Walnut, CA
Census Year Pop. %± —
, %
, %
, %
, %
,172 −2.8%
Est , %
Source: US Census Bureau.