Under orders from Spanish colonial authorities, a mixed group of settlers of Indigenous, African, and European ancestry established a farming pueblo near the Yang-na Native American village. The settlement, envisioned as a supply post between missions, was named for the Virgin Mary's title "Queen of the Angels." It would remain a modest agricultural outpost for decades before growing into one of the largest cities in the world.
Governor Felipe de Neve chose the site for its river access and fertile soil, and the eleven founding families—forty-four people in all—reflected the racial diversity of Spain's American empire: they included Spaniards, Indigenous Mexicans, Africans, and mixed-race settlers, but almost no one of pure European descent. They walked north from the presidio at San Gabriel carrying farming tools, seeds, and little else.
The pueblo they built bore no resemblance to the sprawling metropolis that would later claim its name. For its first century, Los Angeles remained a dusty ranching town of a few thousand people, overshadowed by San Francisco and San Diego. Its transformation began only with the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s and accelerated wildly after oil was discovered and the film industry set up shop in the early twentieth century.
Today a plaque near Olvera Street marks the approximate site of that original settlement, a small historical footnote beneath the freeways and skyscrapers of a city of four million.
Key people: Felipe de Neve