Los Angeles' Map, Explained

More reading and resources:

[Killersanchez]

A future topic video could be”LA isn’t really LA” you could talk about all the independent cities and neighboring counties all combine into one franken-city.

[jonathaneby]

The grid was also at 45° from true north to prevent the sun from being directly in your eyes at sunset. If you look at other west coast Spanish cities like Lima, or San Francisco, you have the same 45° angle at the center of the city.

[michaelbarry]

A turning point in Los Angeles history is when Judge Doom wanted to demolish Toontown to build a freeway, luckily that never happened.

[davidjameshenry]

The San Fernando Valley deserves its own video, the Westside, the Beach Cities, and South Central all deserve their own coverage.

[nirelock]

This was great! I would suggest highlighting the Pacific Electric Railway Company and the rise and fall of the red cars. The Huntington's had major influence over where people were moving to and LA's sprawl all together. As a SoCal Native its great to see you dive into our history, sorry about the weather!

[mroc]

There are so many historical oddities that made LA's map what it is! Excited to see more of this, especially William Mulholland's influence and the collapse of the St Francis Dam, it explains why the city limits have such a weird shape. Basically LA kept annexing neighboring cities until the dam collapsed and then they had to agree with the other remaining cities (Santa Monica, Culver City, Pasadena) that they wouldn't solo any more water projects

[glenmorrison]

9:25 Fun fact: the league is supposed to represent the distance a healthy person walks in an hour. So it's a very intuitive unit. Also, in LA we often express driving distances in how much time it takes, which means in modern LA we using a different kind of league more or less!

[comrontiana]

Dude You made the Nola and Seattle videos right before I visited both cities for the first time. Now I’m going to LA in June and this is what you post??! Haha so awesome. Great content dude love it!

[sdsd]

If you're interested in more "scarring" on the street grid, look up The Militant's Pacific Electric Archaeology Map which is an interactive Google Map of all the former P-E lines. Lots of evidence still remains of where the former lines were, including funky property lines

[brionnagutierrez]

YAY! My daughter and I stay waiting for these! Thanks Daniel!

[crustef]

This was a great video! I'm an LA history guide. When someone in downtown asks if we are facing north, west, etc... it's always an opportunity to launch into a lesson about Spanish colonial city planning!

[ronnnie]

Brilliant video as always. Would love a continuation from 1913 onwards, how the car fundamentally changed the shape of the city, when the sprawl reached the sea and how it filled in the gaps between, if the river has changed course (and maybe when the concrete channel was built), etc. As you said, still a lot to cover for such a city.

Love your work!

[BrandonMucklow]

A video about the history of the freeway system is obviously a must. It’s insane to think what events occurred to allow freeways to be built. It demonstrates class divide and the ability to have an effect on the government. The difference between what was planned and what was executed is very interesting. The Melrose freeway is a perfect example of the ability to organize politically in such a way that blocks the construction of a freeway. Boyle Heights was decimated; Beverly Hills wasn’t. The land along Santa Monica Blvd in BH is wider than you’d expect (especially from a map) due to the plans for a freeway, which were blocked, resulting in a region that was flattened and never filled. It explains so much of why the city and neighborhoods look the way they do.

[jamestonbellajo]

Daniel, I sincerely hope you see this comment because I love this video. Of everyone I know, I’m the only person that is keenly aware of and fascinated by the layout of LA’s map.

I went to USC and lived on the very eastern edge of Koreatown while I was there so I took Hoover home everyday. Hoover is the street where the 45 angled streets end and the completely vertical north south streets begin. So spending thousands of hours in traffic makes a guy think, especially a guy who’s already intrigued by the city’s infrastructure and layout.

So thank you for breathing life into this topic!

[tylerlindberg]

Quick detail on the indigenous population - the native people were called the Tongva, this specific settlement where DTLA is now was called Ya'anga. From your video, you make it sound like the people were called Ya'anga. They are Tongva.

[sdsd]

There are a lot of secrets in LA's street and block numbering system. Little known fact: just by looking at any street sign in the city, you can see how many blocks (and in what direction) you are from City Hall. Great LA Times article on this titled "For Street Addresses, It All Begins at 1st and Main"

A lot of the famous streets in the city are named by what you see when you drive along it from City Hall. Aside from the obvious ones like Santa Monica Blvd, and Long Beach Blvd, you can take Sunset Boulevard to see the sunset.

[jonathaneby]

I think you should do a video specifically on how the street grid lines up with the pacific electric lines. Santa Monica, Venice, Glendale, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, Anaheim, Pasadena, Van Nuys, all of these neighborhoods and cities had their own grids connected to the pacific electric, then the sprawl filled in the gaps after the car exploded. LA was truly founded by these two grids, and the grids around the pacific electric settlements. Then cars filled in the rest.

[joaquinclavijo]

Straight streets to allow for wind ventilation were really important in spanish colonies as it was believed that illnesses were spread by bad odors or ''bad air'. The miasmatic theory of disease.

[lohphat]

Where I grew up in OC, there's a diagonal cut of property lines for several miles at an odd angle.

It's the old property line between Rancho Los Coyotes, and Rancho Los Alamitos. The Spanish land grant Rancho system is worth a video.

You can still see the property line cutting across from the NW at Los Coyotes Diag and Parkcrest in Long Beach (west of the San Gabriel river) to the SE at Orangewood Ave. and Mac St. where there's an old ranch house's back fence is aligned with the border on Google Maps sat view.

[johngraves]

As a longtime LA resident (since 1959) I must say that was super interesting and it attempts to be comprehensive as far as it goes. I kind of pride myself on knowing the city inside out, if that's even possible. 1913 was a pivotal year, indeed. That's when Congress voted in the Federal Reserve in the dark of night, Christmas Eve I believe it was. Video suggestions:

1. When the different sub-communities were developed and populated.
2. The development of LA's water system (and other infrastructure)
3. When the freeways were built.
4. The founding, growth and development of the major studios.
5. The founding, growth and development of the aerospace industry.
6. How Los Angeles tried to defend itself during the cold war.
7. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory sodium reactor meltdown was in July 1959 -- egads, just about the time i arrived in LA as a toddler! And not too far from that site! I can report I've never had cancer.
8. interestingly, Charles Manson's notorious Spahn Ranch was located NOT FAR from the site of that reactor accident. About as close as is possible, in fact.