LOS ANGELES

city, seat, since 1850, of Los Angeles county, southern California, U.S., the second largest city in the country. Originally founded by Spanish settlers in 1781 as El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles (the Town of the Queen of the Angels), Los Angeles became a U.S. city when taken (bloodlessly) by U.S. forces in the Mexican War in 1846. The town prospered in the wake of the northern California gold rush of 1849, and vast Spanish and Mexican land grants were quickly broken up, fenced, and settled by large numbers of Americans arriving from the east. Aided by a railroad rate war and the rapid development of port facilities, the population of Los Angeles more than quadrupled between 1880 and 1890, and it tripled in size in the first decade of the 20th century. The sprawling metropolis has at the same time acquired contemporary urban problems, such as severe air and water pollution, clogged freeways, extensive slum areas, overcrowded schools, and budgetary shortfalls, but the city was still growing in the late 20th century. Los Angeles spreads over a broad coastal plain between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, enclosing within its boundaries independent municipalities such as Beverly Hills and Culver City. The Santa Monica Mountains bisect the city, separating Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Pacific Palisades from the southern boundary of the San Fernando Valley. Coastal mountain ranges to the north and east act as buffers against extreme summer heat and winter cold, and even in the hottest months humidity tends to be low and the nights cool. Brushfires occur sporadically, and earthquakes are relatively frequent but are not often of major intensity. Although Los Angeles county was once the nation's wealthiest agricultural county, significant agricultural production has declined. Several thousand acres of farmland were sacrificed to freeways and housing between 1950 and 1965 to accommodate the area's dramatic population growth. Major industries now include tourism; banking; insurance; health-care services; the manufacture of aerospace equipment, pharmaceutical supplies, glass, rubber, and cement; petroleum exploitation and refining; food processing; and electronics. In addition, Los Angeles is the nation's motion-picture capital and plays an important role in the radio, television, and recording industries. City planners in Los Angeles have long been eager to give the city a real downtown, but the downtown area, in spite of revitalization efforts, remains mainly a financial centre, largely separate from the city's daily life. Neighbourhood living conditions range from expansive town-house complexes and shopping centres in the San Fernando Valley to congested urban slums in the black neighbourhoods of south-central Los Angeles and the Mexican-American (Chicano) neighbourhoods of East Los Angeles, as well as Asian-American enclaves on the eastern and western edges of the downtown area. Hollywood, long a part of Los Angeles (since 1910), has lost much of the glamour that it had in earlier years. Public parks include Griffith Park, which spreads across more than 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of mountainous area and contains the city's zoo and Will Rogers State Historic Park. The missions of San Gabriel Arcngel (1771) and San Fernando Rey de Espaa (1797) have been preserved, and the plaza where the city got its start is now part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument; the latter also contains the city's first church and Olvera Street, an important tourist attraction that has many Mexican shops and cafs. The city's Central Library (1926) was the last building designed by Bertram Goodhue. Art museums include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Major institutions of higher education include the University of Southern California (USC; 1880), Occidental College (1887), and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA; 1919). The California Institute of Technology (1891) is in nearby Pasadena. Unlike other large American cities, Los Angeles does not have an efficient public transportation system (a modest subway line opened in 1993), and the vast majority of its residents operate private automobiles over the extensive network of freeways that dominate the city. Los Angeles (in and around San Pedro) has one of the most active international ports in the country. Airports include a municipal airport and the private Hughes airport, two airports serving the San Fernando Valley, and the Los Angeles International Airport in southwestern Los Angeles. Area city, 466 square miles (1,207 square km); metropolitan area (PMSA), 4,070 square miles (10,541 square km). Pop. (1994 est.) city, 3,620,543; (1993 est.) Los AngelesLong Beach PMSA, 9,146,057; (1992 est.) Los AngelesRiversideOrange County CMSA, 15,048,000. city, seat of Los Angeles County, southern California, U.S. A semitropical metropolis of palm trees and swimming pools, television studios and aerospace factories, Los Angeles has become the second most populous city and metropolitan area (after New York) in the United States. The city sprawls across some 464 square miles (1,202 square kilometres) of a broad coastal plain agreeably situated between the San Gabriel Mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Its hallmark is an architecturally dramatic network of freeways. The automobile so dominates life in this uniquely mobile community that Reyner Banham, an English observer who took his cue from scholars who study Italian in order to read Dante, is said to have learned to drive a car so he could read Los Angeles in the original. Los Angeles County contains more than 80 other incorporated cities, including Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Long Beach, within its 4,083 square miles. The county also encompasses two channel islands, Santa Catalina and San Clemente; a mountain peak, Mt. San Antonio, familiarly known as Old Baldy, 10,080 feet (3,072 metres) high; more than 900 square miles of desert; and 74 miles (119 kilometres) of seacoast. The metropolitan area has paid for its spectacular growth by acquiring such present-day urban attributes as smog-filled skies, polluted harbours, clogged freeways, crowded classrooms, explosive ghettos, and annual budgets teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Since the city and the county are so intertwined physically and spiritually, any consideration of Los Angeles must move back and forth between the two entities. formerly Los Anjeles, capital of Bo-Bo provincia, Bo-Bo regin, south-central Chile. It is located on a tributary of the Bo-Bo River in the southern part of the Central Valley. Founded in 1739 and elevated to city status in 1852, Los Angeles was swept by fire in 1820, has suffered earthquake damage repeatedly, and was destroyed several times in the long struggle with the Araucanian Indians. It is now an agricultural processing centre handling milk, wine, wheat, sugar beets, fruit, and lumber produced mainly in the valley. The city is on the Pan-American Highway; it is linked to Concepcin 60 miles (97 km) northwest by road and rail and to the main north-south railroad by a 13-mile branch line. Pop. (1992 prelim.) 93,515. Additional reading Introductions to the history of the city are John Caughey and Laree Caughey (eds.), Los Angeles: Biography of a City (1976); and John D. Weaver, Los Angeles: The Enormous Village 17811981 (1980). Three standard works, although dated, are still indispensable: J.M. Guinn, A History of California and an Extended History of Los Angeles and Environs, 3 vol. (1915); Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946, reissued as Southern California: An Island on the Land, 1973); and Writers' Program, Los Angeles: A Guide to the City and Its Environs, completely rev. 2nd ed. (1951). The first 40 years as a city are covered in two classic studies: Robert Glass Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 18501880, 2nd ed. (1951, reissued 1990); and Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California (1944, reissued 1970). Two volumes that focus on southern California and Los Angeles from 1850 through the 1920s are Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (1985), and Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (1990). Three early-day Angelinos have left invaluable recollections: Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881, reissued 196567), although it should be read with caution; Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California, 18531913, 4th ed. rev. and augmented (1970, reissued 1984); and Boyle Workman, The City That Grew (1936). One of the most useful records of pioneer days is John Albert Wilson, History of Los Angeles County, California (1880, reprinted as Reproduction of Thompson and West's History of Los Angeles County, California, 1959). William L. Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles' Water Supply in the Owens Valley (1982); Abraham Hoffman, Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens ValleyLos Angeles Water Controversy (1981); and John Walton, Western Times and Water Wars (1992), are excellent studies of this key subject. The ethnic and racial diversity of Los Angeles is explored in Lynell George, No Crystal Stair: African-Americans in the City of Angels (1992); and Antonio Ros-Bustamante and Pedro Castillo, An Illustrated History of Mexican Los Angeles, 17811985 (1986). Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), is the work of a perceptive English visitor. David Gebhard and Robert Winter, Architecture in Los Angeles (1985), provides both description and history of important architecture and includes numerous photographs. The first child of the freeway generation to make a serious appraisal of his off-ramp heritage is David Brodsly, L.A. Freeway: An Appreciative Essay (1981). John D. Weaver The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica