Gabrieleño and Chumash Indians,  arrived in the desert region between 5000 and 6000 BC. The first European known to have visited the LA basin was Portuguese sailor Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who cruised the coast in 1542, but it wasn't until the late 18th century that the real influx began. In 1769, the Spanish governor of California, Don Gaspar de Portola, and Franciscan father Junipero Serra led an expedition north from San Diego, looking for places to build missions and Christianise California's 'heathen' natives. Eventually, 21 California missions were established along El Camino Real (The King's Highway), two of them in what was to become Greater Los Angeles: the Mission San Gabriel Archangel (1771) and the Mission San Fernando Rey de España (1797). In 1781, the missionaries chose 44 settlers from San Gabriel to establish a new town on the banks of a stream about 9 miles (15km) southwest of the mission. They named the settlement El Pueblo de Nuestro Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río Porciúncula (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Porciuncula River) after a saint whose feast day had just been celebrated. Los Angeles, as the pueblo became known, developed into a thriving farming community.

After independence in 1821, many of that new nation's citizens looked to California to quench their thirst for private land. By the mid-1830s, the missions had been secularised and a series of governors began doling out hundreds of free land grants, thus giving birth to the rancho system. The prosperous rancheros quickly became California's bigwigs, while immigrants from the United States became the merchant class. By the mid-1830s, there were still only 29 US citizens residing in Los Angeles. Most Easterners hadn't heard about California until 1840, with the publication of Richard Henry Dana's popular Two Years Before the Mast, an account of his experience plying the hide-and-tallow trade. 'In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be,' Dana wrote of Los Angeles, then with a population of just over 1200.

The United States paid $15 million for all Mexican territories west of the Rio Grande and north of Arizona's Gila River, including Alta California. Two years later California was admitted as the 31st state of the union. The big push behind this rapid fire recognition was gold; first unearthed near the San Fernando mission in 1842, that find was soon eclipsed by James Marshall's famous 1848 discovery on the American River, which ignited one of the greatest gold rushes in history.

Los Angeles became a county on 4 April 1850 - By 1854, northern California's gold rush had peaked and the state fell into a depression. As unemployed miners flocked to LA, businesses that had harnessed their futures to miners' fortunes closed their doors. Making matters worse for the rancheros was the land commission sent west by Congress in 1851. Everyone who had received a land grant two decades earlier was now forced to prove its legitimacy with documents and witnesses. By 1857, some 800 cases had been reviewed by tribunal, 500 in favour of the original pre-rancho landowners.

LA's population soared to one million by 1920, two by 1930, which had a lot to do with the discovery of oil. During WWI, the Lockheed brothers and Donald Douglas established aerospace plants in the area, and by WWII the aviation industry employed enough people to lift LA out of the Depression. A real estate boom, capitalizing on the influx of aviation employees, brought capital to the region as well as new suburbs south of Los Angeles. And then there was the movies.

Pershing Square-Mayor Aguilar dedicated this land for use as park land in 1866.  On November 8, 1918 the park was formally named Pershing Square in honour of the World War I general.  The next major change came in the 1950's when a three-story, 1800-car underground parking garage was built beneath the park to serve the growing downtown business community. 

DODGERS-LEGEND-the National League in 1890 began on a positive note, as the team nicknamed the "Bridegrooms" won the championship with an 86-43 record. It was the first of 21 National League pennants that the Dodgers would win during the century. The moniker "Bridegrooms" was attached to Manager William "Gunner" McGunnigle's 1890 ball club because seven of the players got married around the same time in 1888. However, despite the success of the Bridegrooms, McGunnigle didn't last past that initial year and the team paraded through six different managers before the end of the decade. The skippers included John Montgomery Ward (1891-'92), Dave Foutz (1893-'96), William Barnie (1897-'98), Mike Griffin (1898), Charles H. Ebbets (1898) and Ned Hanlon (1899-1905). The term "Trolley Dodgers" was attached to the Brooklyn ball club due to the complex maze of trolley cars that weaved its way through the borough of Brooklyn. The name was then shortened to just "Dodgers." During the 1890's, other popular nicknames were Ward's Wonders, Foutz's Fillies and Hanlon's Superbas.