LOS ANGELES BRIEF HISTORY & DEMOGRAPHICS
History of Los Angeles Brief (Demographics Table of Contents)
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Early Settlement and Development
In 1769 Gaspar de Portolá, a Spanish explorer and administrator, visited Yangna, a village of 200 Native Americans in the Los Angeles basin. This Native American society is known as Gabrielino after the nearby Mission San Gabriel, where most of them were moved after the Spanish built it in 1771. The former village site is now Elysian Park near downtown Los Angeles. In 1781 the Spanish founded a farming settlement and named it El Pueblo Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, Los Angeles became the market center for cattle hide and tallow, which was traded with the United States. The settlement served several times as the seat of government for the Mexican territory of Alta California, as the region was called then.
In the early 19th century traders came to Los Angeles, and a few Americans began to settle there. By the early 1840s Los Angeles was the largest settlement in Alta California. Mexican rule ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded Alta California to the United States. In 1850 it was admitted to the Union as the state of California, and that same year Los Angeles incorporated as a city.
At first, growth was slow. The California gold rush of 1848, which continued into the 1850s, affected Los Angeles only indirectly. As a cattle center, the city supplied fresh meat to the tens of thousands of prospectors pouring into California. However, while California's population rose to more than 90,000 by 1850, the population of Los Angeles that year was only 1,610. In 1870 it was still only 5,728.