August 1958 | Volume 9, Issue 5 In Los Angeles, Spanish friars,
Mexican dons, Yankee troops, and local boosters have reared a
colossus that won’t stop growing O n a hot summer afternoon, two
commuters sat in an auto on a Los Angeles freeway—stalled bumper
to bumper in the homebound traffic. Their shirts were open from
the blast of the sun, their eyes swollen with the smog of a
hundred thousand exhausts. “My solution,” drawled one of them,
“is to make everybody in L.A. draw lots to see who packs up and
moves out.” A generation ago this would have been treason. But
gone now is the booster spirit that sparked a hundred-year
migration to Southern California. In its place has come a
desperate realization that Los Angeles has oversold itself. And
it is too late to stop the tide. How did this sprawling city of
two million—for that matter, this metropolitan area of almost
five million—rise up from a semidesert devoid of resources save
a balmy climate? Its story begins with Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo,
a Portuguese captai