(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)
Looking to discover L.A.’s Mexican history? Check out these 10 places
The history of Los Angeles is complicated, and there’s no better example of this than Olvera Street. Located downtown in the L.A. Plaza Historic District, the popular marketplace is lined with Mexican restaurants, stores and kiosks selling everything from T-shirts to pottery to statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
For decades, many have believed that Olvera Street was the historic Mexican center of Los Angeles. In reality, it was created in 1930 by Northern California transplant Christine Sterling, who fell in love with a romanticized Old Mexico filled with strolling guitar players in sombreros and women in colorful peasant dresses.
The Ávila Adobe on Olvera Street is one of the oldest houses in Los Angeles. Today, it’s a popular museum.
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The city’s first Mexican immigrants came to L.A. from the states of Sinaloa and Sonora in Mexico during the Gold Rush and settled in an area that became known as Sonora Town. It wasn’t located on Olvera Street but several blocks away, in what is now Chinatown.
What happened to Sonora Town? Like so many Latino neighborhoods, transportation and rising real estate prices pushed residents to other parts of L.A. when the Southern Pacific Railroad put its depot nearby.
Historic monuments all over the city and county tell a story of Los Angeles from the people who settled here, not necessarily those who existed here until their land was taken away.
Pío Pico State Historic Park in Whittier offers more perspective to the life of Alta California’s last governor, who was of Spanish, African and Indigenous Mexican descent.
(Ringo Chiu / For De Los)
We can’t forget that California belonged to Mexico until it became a state in 1850 after the Mexican-American War. For centuries before that, California was home to hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people until the Spanish arrived in 1769 and wiped out many of them through violence, enslavement and disease. The Indigenous communities that survived faced another horrific challenge when in 1851, California’s first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, declared war against them “... until the Indian race becomes extinct …” resulting in more than 100,000 more deaths.
Artwork on the wall at La Placita (La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles), which was almost demolished after the Northridge earthquake but was renovated to its former glory and is now a restaurant and event space.
(Ringo Chiu / For De Los)
There’s so much hidden history to be found. So where can you go in Los Angeles to uncover these stories? Here are 10 places to learn or think about L.A.’s Mexican history.
Showing Places
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Ávila Adobe
Downtown L.A. Historical Landmark
One of Christine Sterling’s motivations for developing Olvera Street was to save the Ávila Adobe from demolition. Built in 1818 by Francisco Ávila, it’s one of the oldest houses in Los Angeles (not the actual oldest house — that’s the Sanchez Adobe in Baldwin Hills). Ávila, a ranchero from Sinaloa, served as Los Angeles’ mayor in 1810 and died in 1830. His family members lived in the adobe until 1868 except for nine days during the Mexican-American War, when U.S. Commodore Robert Stockton commandeered it as a military headquarters. After Ávila’s daughter and her husband, Theodore Rimpau, moved to Anaheim (he would become that city’s first mayor), the house was rented out or was sometimes vacant until the L.A. County Health Department condemned it in 1926. Today, it’s a popular museum with tours of the adobe as it would have looked in the 1840s.
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Pico House & Los Pobladores
Downtown L.A. L.A. History
Just across Los Angeles Plaza from Olvera Street you’ll find the city’s first luxury hotel.
Alta California’s last governor, Pío Pico, opened Pico House in 1870. Pico, who was of Spanish, African and Indigenous Mexican descent, was one of the most powerful men of the 19th century and had a major L.A. thoroughfare named after him.
If it’s surprising that one of California’s richest and most influential 19th century men was Afro-Mexican in a time of great racial unrest, you may want to visit the Los Pobladores plaque on the southwest side of the Plaza. It honors the 11 families (44 adults and children) from Sinaloa and Sonora that the Spanish government persuaded to travel 1,000 miles to settle in the new pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. Nearly half of the adults identified as Black or mixed race.
Alta California’s last governor, Pío Pico, opened Pico House in 1870. Pico, who was of Spanish, African and Indigenous Mexican descent, was one of the most powerful men of the 19th century and had a major L.A. thoroughfare named after him.
If it’s surprising that one of California’s richest and most influential 19th century men was Afro-Mexican in a time of great racial unrest, you may want to visit the Los Pobladores plaque on the southwest side of the Plaza. It honors the 11 families (44 adults and children) from Sinaloa and Sonora that the Spanish government persuaded to travel 1,000 miles to settle in the new pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. Nearly half of the adults identified as Black or mixed race.
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(Ringo Chiu / For De Los)
La Placita (La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles)
Downtown L.A. L.A. History
La Placita is the oldest church in Los Angeles and part of its name — “la Reina de Los Ángeles” or “the queen of angels” — refers to the Virgin Mary. In the 19th century, area Catholics honored Mary with an annual daylong festival that began at La Placita. But her honorary status as patron saint went away after the remains of another virgin were discovered in Rome in the 1850s.
The Spanish Bishop of Monterey, Calif., took the martyred Saint Vibiana’s remains to Los Angeles, made her the patron saint of L.A. and built a grand cathedral in her honor. The original cathedral was damaged in the Northridge earthquake and the Catholic Church tried to demolish it in 1996. The L.A. Conservancy sued to stop the demolition and won. The original cathedral was renovated to its former glory and is now Redbird restaurant and the stunning Vibiana event space.
The Spanish Bishop of Monterey, Calif., took the martyred Saint Vibiana’s remains to Los Angeles, made her the patron saint of L.A. and built a grand cathedral in her honor. The original cathedral was damaged in the Northridge earthquake and the Catholic Church tried to demolish it in 1996. The L.A. Conservancy sued to stop the demolition and won. The original cathedral was renovated to its former glory and is now Redbird restaurant and the stunning Vibiana event space.
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Ft. Moore Pioneer Memorial
Downtown L.A. L.A. History
The Ft. Moore Pioneer Memorial is as interesting for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. Built into a wall along Hill Street near the 101 Freeway overpass, the memorial is on the actual site of the U.S. military’s Ft. Moore. It includes an 80-foot wide tile fountain and a 45-foot high bas-relief panel depicting U.S. soldiers raising the first American flag over Los Angeles after the Mexican-American War. A timeline next to it describes a Los Angeles that begins when pioneers started building homes and planting vineyards and orange groves on ranchos. It says transportation allowed settlers to find Los Angeles and make it into a city. It doesn’t mention that people already lived on those ranchos and El Pueblo de Los Angeles had been a town for a hundred years before the settlers arrived.
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Boyle Hotel/Mariachi Plaza
Los Angeles County Attraction
Austrian immigrant George Cummings was 39 when he married 19-year-old Maria del Sacramento López, whose family owned land that included what is now Boyle Heights. The couple built the Queen Anne-style Cummings Block hotel in 1889 to capitalize on the opening of a cable rail line that would bring “white middle-class prospective homeowners” through the neighborhood, according to George J. Sánchez’s book “Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy.” Boyle Heights didn’t stay white and the Cummings Block became the Boyle Hotel and was eventually nicknamed “Mariachi Hotel” as it sits across from Mariachi Plaza where musicians have gathered since the 1930s, and many mariachis lived in the hotel’s upper-floor apartments. It’s now owned by the nonprofit East L.A. Community Corporation offering affordable housing units on the upper floors and businesses at street level, including La Monarca bakery and Libros Schmibros Lending Library.
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Kuruvungna Village Springs
L.A. History
Behind a gate at University High School lies an ancient spring that provided water for the Kuruvungna Village, where the Tongva people lived for thousands of years until the Spanish Portola Expedition “discovered” it in 1769. The Spanish removed the Tongva and forced them to help build the San Gabriel Mission. The springs and acres of land around it were included in a land grant given to Francisco Sepulveda in 1839. The land changed hands several times until the Los Angeles Unified School District bought it and it eventually became University High School. The Kuruvungna Village Springs are maintained by the Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation, which hosts tours the first Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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Bust of Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker
Santa Monica L.A. History
A bust of Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker sits in the middle of Palisades Park Rose Garden. The inscription reads, “For her love and devotion to Santa Monica and generous contributions of land .…” Generous doesn’t describe all that de Baker did to shape the landscape of West Los Angeles. Born into wealth and married at 14, the shrewd businesswoman eventually took over her second husband’s business affairs and donated what is now Palisades Park to the city of Santa Monica along with part of Rustic Canyon to the state of California. Her biggest impact was donating 388 acres of prime California real estate to the U.S. government to create a National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, which is now the Veteran’s Administration campus in Westwood.
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'The Ink Well' rock
Santa Monica L.A. History
A plaque embedded in a rock on the beach bike bath in Santa Monica between Bay and Bicknell streets celebrates the spot where Black beachgoers gathered from the 1920s to the 1950s. The plaque says, “‘the Ink Well” was an important gathering place for African Americans long after racial restrictions on public beaches were abandoned in 1927” and was a place to go where they experienced less harassment than anywhere else. It also mentions Nick Gabaldón, who Atlas Obscura says was “California’s first documented surfer of African American and Mexican American descent,” who learned to surf in Santa Monica and died young in a surfing accident in Malibu.
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Campo de Cahuenga Memorial Park
Studio City L.A. History
If you can’t get enough Pío Pico history then head to Campo de Cahuenga Memorial Park Across from Universal Studios (or visit the Pío Pico State Historic Park in Whittier). It’s where Pico, then governor of Alta California, signed the Treaty of Cahuenga with U.S. Lt. Col. John C. Fremont declaring a cease-fire leading to the end of the Mexican-American War. The treaty also promised that Mexican landowners could keep their land, but that didn’t work out for everyone. The park includes a replica adobe museum near the ruins of the original adobe building and features historical records from the Spanish Mission period through the Civil War. If you go in January, you might catch the park’s annual reenactment of the signing of the treaty.
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Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum welcomes the community to celebrate Día de Muertos.
(Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum)
Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum
Rancho Dominguez Event
While many Mexican families lost their land after California became part of the United States, descendants of Juan Jose Dominguez have been able to keep Rancho San Pedro — a 75,000-acre parcel granted to Dominguez by Spanish King Carlos III in 1784 (which the Spanish took from Indigenous Californians, FYI). The rancho hosts annual reenactments of the Battle of Dominguez Hill, when Alta California troops held off a U.S. attack using a canon they found buried on the rancho.
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