A Topographical History of Los Angeles: Physical and Cultural Landscapes

Los Angeles is dotted with enclaves, spanning from a few blocks to vast neighborhoods deeply embedded with diasporas. Within these enclaves, different cultural heritage is maintained through cuisine, and the casual diner would consider whatever the dish is to be authentic. While food is a critical aspect of preserving culture, it is important to explore where that food comes from, and how it came to be grown in California. Many staples of the California food system originated half a world away, and as such, an ethnically diverse population can tap into the same resources. Historically, Los Angeles's achievement as an agricultural hub was reliant on topography and weather, which Spanish settlers found to be similar to that of the Mediterranean Basin. Early success in farming Mediterranean produce led to a slow growing transnational movement of immigrant farm workers that brought with them news crops, laying the framework for the culturally diverse landscape of present day Los Angeles.

Many of the crops first grown in Los Angeles were once passed interculturally through an immense global trade network of the pre-colonial Old World. Produce often travelled as seed on the Silk Road around the Mediterranean Basin. At the peak of this trade network, various crops were cultivated in one country and transported to the next. For example, figs, olives, citrus varietals and stone fruits traveled from East Asia, but were cultivated in Western Europe and came to be known as staples to their cuisine. Spanish colonists brought many of these crops with them on their conquest of the so-called New World. In turn, certain produce came to be cultivated en masse in Southern California because the fertile farmlands and distinctive climate were similar to their point of origins in the Mediterranean Basin.

Los Angeles & San Bernardino Topographic Map (1880) || Map courtesy of David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Los Angeles County sits within the Transverse Ranges-mountains that stretch across Santa Barbara at their northern point and San Diego County in the south. Most of California's mountains run north to south, congruent with the coastline, but these ranges run east to west with a lush pocket of land nestled in between. The chaparral region that spans within the mountain ranges is marked with woodland, shrubbery, Mediterranean forests, rolling hills and miles of tillable farmland.

The weather has long been the main attraction of Southern California, but it is also vital in sustaining crops grown in the region. California has what is called a Mediterranean climate, meaning summers are long and warm, winters are mild, and rainfall is generally sparse year round. The Mediterranean might evoke the idea of palm trees and coastlines-perhaps rows of olive trees and vineyards. This is for good reason, olives and grapes, two of the first Mediterranean crops to be planted in what is now Los Angeles County, thrive in the dry summers and survive during the frostless winters with little irrigation. With even a rudimentary irrigation system, Mediterranean regions can also sustain wheat and certain grains; these too were early Southern California crops.

View of East Los Angeles, California, from Brooklyn Heights looking north to the Sierra Madre Mountains || Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

Globally, a handful of metropolitan cities of Los Angeles's geographic magnitude subside in a Mediterranean climate. Most of these cities-like Athens, Barcelona, Beirut, Jerusalem and Rome-are part of the classical Mediterranean Basin, which surrounds the Mediterranean Sea in Southern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The climate of this landscape was conducive to dryland agricultural practice, so historically, crops like olives and oranges flourished before crossing to the Americas with Spanish colonization.

The Spanish Empire expanded into North America's Pacific Coast by way of Jesuit missionaries. With seed brought from Mexico, the missions were able to sustain themselves with both orchard crops and cereal grains. To cultivate the arable lands, irrigation systems called zanjas harnessed nearby water sources. One such hamlet, using the Rio Porciuncula (better known as the Los Angeles River), was founded as El Pueblo de La Reina de Los ngeles in 1781.

The missions used the mixed agriculture techniques typical to the Mediterranean Basin, planting figs, apricots, pears to name a few. Similarly, the ranchos, a Spanish public grants program, created a cattle industry. Cattle stock was profitable on the ranchos, while the mission settlements grew into farming communities. When the United States annexed California from Mexico in 1848, El Pueblo de La Reina de Los ngeles was a booming agricultural town known simply as Los Angeles. During this time, the city had experienced an influx of farmers and farm workers, presupposing what would become a long relationship with immigrants.

Early landscape alterations in California are the result of Spanish farming and ranching, depicted in this 1883 lithograph of Rancho Estudillo, in San Diego County || Photo courtesy of Riverside Museum Press

Initial farm workers, mainly European immigrants, came to Los Angeles from the Eastern Seaboard. As Mediterranean crops become more commodifiable, immigrants from a variety of countries could be found working the farm lands. The larger ethnic groups-including Chinese, Japanese and Italian-settled in enclaves.

While not entirely typical, certain immigrant groups were able to monetize culturally specific crops. Celery and asparagus, for example, both originated in the Levantine region of the Mediterranean Basin before being cultivated in China and brought to Los Angeles. Both thrived under the large garden plots, and often full scale farms, worked by the newfound Chinese labor force. By the 1890s, Chinese immi

LINK:	https://www.kcet.org/shows/the-migrant-kitchen/a-topographical-history...
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