From Tongva Yaanga to a three-time Olympic host
Los Angeles is California’s largest city and the U.S. second after New York, with about 3.87 million residents inside city limits in 2025 and a metro near 12.9 million. Spanish settlers founded the pueblo on Tongva Yaanga on 4 September 1781—a Spanish pueblo whose long formal name honored Our Lady, Queen of the Angels.
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the coast for Spain in 1542; Portolá and Crespí reached the site in 1769; Mission San Gabriel rose in 1771. Forty-four Pobladores—many mestizo or mulatto, including Filipino Antonio Miranda Rodríguez—planted the town. Mexican independence folded it into Alta California in 1821; the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo passed it to the United States. Municipal incorporation came 4 April 1850, months before statehood. Oil strikes from 1892 helped California supply about a quarter of world petroleum by 1923.
William Mulholland’s 1913 Los Angeles Aqueduct unlocked growth and pulled neighbouring towns into city limits for water access. Hollywood merged in 1910; by 1921 more than eighty percent of world film production sat in L.A. Population passed a million by 1930. Wartime Calship and six major aircraft makers flooded Terminal Island and the basin with Liberty ships and planes. The city hosted Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984 and is booked again for 2028.
Sprawl covers about 469 square miles from the Pacific across the Santa Monica Mountains into the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles County, whose seat is the city, held roughly 9.86 million people in 2022. In 2024 the metro’s gross product topped $1.295 trillion—third worldwide after New York and Tokyo. Zoning experiments began early: a 1908 residential ordinance barred many industrial uses, a U.S. first, though without New York’s later comprehensive map. In 1969 UCLA sent the first ARPANET message, a quiet birthplace note for the internet.
Source: Los Angeles
