Founding of Los Angeles

Los Angeles was founded by Spanish colonial authorities as a pueblo, El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles, settled by a group of families of mixed Native American, African and European ancestry from Sinaloa and Sonora. It was in the territory of the Tongva people, and a Spanish expedition under Gaspar de Portola had visited the area in 1769. After Mexican independence it became part of Mexico, and it passed to the United States after the Mexican-American War. The arrival of the railroad, the discovery of oil and the growth of the film industry in the early twentieth century turned it into one of the largest cities in the United States.

Open on the timeline