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The capture of Mexico City by US troops in September 1847 put an end to the fighting and led to the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which the Mexican government ceded much of its northern territory to the US.

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THE RISE OF A REGION

Many rancheros lost their land when the American government questioned their title under the 1851 Land Act. During this period of loose government, LA was a true Wild West town, filled with saloons, brothels and gambling dens. Added to the mix were thousands of Chinese immigrants who’d arrived for the gold rush and railroad work. These foreigners were viewed by many with suspicion and the state even enacted a special ‘foreign miner’s tax.’

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Indian gaming brings some 8900 jobs to the Inland Empire, which comprises Riverside County and San Bernardino County.

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The perception of LA and the rest of the region as a lawless backwater began to change with the arrival of the railroad. The transcontinental railroad had been completed in 1869 and shortened the trip from New York to San Francisco from two months to five days, instantly elevating the latter to California’s metropolitan center. Southern California’s parched climate, its distance from both fresh water and mining resources, and its relatively small population initially made it unattractive to the San Francisco railroad moguls. But eventually a bit of wheeling and dealing convinced the Southern Pacific Railroad to build a spur line to LA and Anaheim in Orange County in the mid-1870s. San Diego had to wait until 1884.

During the same period, agriculture diversified, with new crops, especially oranges, being grown in Southern California for markets on the East Coast and abroad. Unlike many fruits, oranges easily survive long-distance rail shipping. As California oranges found their way onto New York grocery shelves, a hard-sell advertising campaign began, and people from the Midwest and eastern US heeded the self-interested advice of crusading magazine and newspaper editor Horace Greeley to ‘Go West, young man.’ A population boom ensued, further driven by a steep drop in train fares after the Santa Fe Railroad Company (AT&SF) laid tracks linking LA with the East Coast across the Arizona Desert in 1887, thereby breaking the Southern Pacific monopoly. The lower fares spurred a major real estate boom lasting from 1886 to 1888. More than 120,000 migrants came to Southern California, settling in the 25 new towns laid out by AT&SF in the eastern part of Los Angeles County.

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Without the 1913 construction of the aqueduct from Owens Valley, LA would never have grown beyond 100,000 inhabitants.

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Much of the land granted to the railroads was sold in big lots to speculators who also acquired, with the help of corrupt politicians and administrators, much of the farmland that was released for new settlement. A major share of the state’s agricultural land became consolidated into large holdings in the hands of a few city-based landlords, establishing the still-existing pattern of industrial-scale ‘agribusiness’ rather than small family farms.

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A BORDERLINE CASE

Southern California has always had a love-hate relationship with its immigrants but owes much of its success to its cultural diversity. Newcomers are typically welcomed in periods of rapid growth, only to be rejected when times get tough. Chinese railroad workers, for instance, were in great demand in the 1860s but ended up being victimized in the 1870s. The Webb Alien Land Law of 1913 prevented some Asian minorities from owning land. During WWII 120,000 people of Japanese heritage – many of them American citizens – were forcibly placed in internment camps. African Americans came to SoCal in large numbers to take jobs in the postwar boom, but found themselves unemployed when the economy slowed down.

It is estimated that more than three million undocumented immigrants are currently in California, despite continuing