A Brief History of Los Angeles In Maps

Part of a 1906 Map of Los Angeles, featuring street rail lines, part of the Library of Congress’s Los Angeles Mapped virtual exhibition (graphic: loc.gov)

Selection of ephemera shows history in an LA state of mind

Los Angeles, that quintessential improbably American city, is many things to many people. Not just currently, though, but over the course of history: Oil fields in the El Segundo area? True. And well known are the orange groves that slowly went under the bulldozer as urban developement covered the San Fernando valley.

This month the Library of Congress invites the public at large to get a look at the Los Angeles that was through its online exhbit, Los Angeles Mapped. Covering the end of the 19th Century and part of the first half of the 20th, the exhibits range from a souvenir place mat from a Bullock’s department store tea-room to a Dutch West India Company map from 1639 depicting that legendary California island, to a “map to the stars” homes, circa 1938.

By far our favorite is the 1916 map detailing the city’s annexation history up to that time, including the aptly-named “Shoestring Addition” connecting the just-added Wilmington and San Pedro areas to the main city in about 1906, and the single, whopping San Fernando Valley annexation which, in 1915 added almost 170 square miles to the city–in one fell swoop.

(via Cartography)