Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [17]
1781 Mexican governor Felipe de Neve sets out from the Mission San Gabriel with a tiny band of settlers, trekking west for 9 miles and establishing the future Los Angeles.
1821–1846 During Mexico’s rule over California, Spanish missionaries are kicked out and the missions are secularized and offered for sale. The governor’s brother-in-law snaps up the Mission of San Juan Capistrano for $710.
1848 By signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, Mexico turns over one third of its territory, including California, New Mexico and parts of Arizona, to the US in exchange for $15 million.
1850 On September 9, California becomes the 31st state of the US, entering the Union as a free (nonslavery) state. The first constitution is written in Spanish and English. Los Angeles is incorporated the same year.
1869 Gold is discovered in Julian, near San Diego, which sparks another frenetic mining boom. Once the gold runs out San Diego goes back to being a sleepy little town of 2000 souls.
1874 The US Department of Agriculture ships three seedless Brazilian navel orange trees to botanists in Riverside. By 1889 orange trees cover more than 13,000 acres, sending the previously woebegone local economy through the roof.
1892 Oil is discovered in Downtown LA, sparking a major oil boom.
1902 The first Rose Bowl football game takes place in Pasadena with the University of Michigan trouncing Stanford 49–0 before 7000 spectators. The next game isn’t for another 11 years.
1913 The Los Angeles aqueduct, built under the direction of city engineer William Mulholland, starts supplying water to LA from the Owens Valley 350 miles to the north.
1923 LA’s famous landmark, the 45ft-tall Hollywood Sign, is built on Mount Lee to promote the Hollywoodland subdivision. The ‘land’ drops off in 1949 but the sign survives and becomes a historical monument in 1973.
1925 At 6.44am on June 29, a 6.3-scale earthquake levels most of downtown Santa Barbara, killing 13 people and causing $8 million in property damage. The city is rebuilt in its distinctive Spanish colonial style.
1929 The first Academy Awards ceremony takes place in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Blvd. About 250 people fork over $10 to be part of the crowd.
1943 Tension between Americans and Mexicans reaches boiling point during the Zoot Suit Riots, which pit American sailors and soldiers against zoot suit–clad Mexican teens while police look on.
1955 Disneyland opens in Anaheim on July 17 after a quick one-year construction period. Its 18 original attractions spread across five themed lands: Tomorrowland, Main Street USA, Adventureland, Frontierland and Fantasyland.
1965 It takes 20,000 National Guards to quell the six-day Watts Riots in south Los Angeles, which cause death, devastation and about $200 million in property damage. The same year, Rodney King is born.
1968 Robert Kennedy is assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in LA.
1969 UCLA professor Len Kleinrock sends data from a computer in Los Angeles to another at Stanford, 360 miles away. He types in ‘L’, ‘O’ and ‘G’ before the system crashes. But the internet was born.
1984 Los Angeles hosts the Olympic summer games for the second time (the first time was in 1932). Russia didn’t show up, leaving US athletes to win 83 gold medals, 63 more than runner-up Romania.
1992 After a 25-year hiatus California resumes executions at San Quentin by snuffing Robert Alton Harris in the gas chamber for killing two teenagers in San Diego in 1978.
1994 The Northridge earthquake (6.7 on the Richter scale) strikes at 4:30am on January 17, killing 72, injuring 11,846 and causing $12.5 billion in damages, making it among the costliest natural disasters in US history.
2000 The population of LA County tops 10 million.
2003 Arnold Schwarzenegger announces his candidacy for California governor on the August 6 edition of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. During the October recall elections he gets 3.74 million votes, just enough