East Los Angeles or East L.A., is an unincorporated community and census designated place (CDP) in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It borders Monterey Park to the northeast; the City of Los Angeles to the north, west, and a small portion to the south. Commerce to the south, and Montebello to the southeast. California State Route 60 and Interstate 710 intersect through the community. According to the United States Census Bureau, East Los Angeles is designated as a census-designated place (CDP) for statistical purposes. The most recent data from the 2020 census reports a population of 118,786, reflecting a 6.1% decrease compared to the 2010 population of 126,496.
The concentration of Hispanic/Latino Americans is 95.16 percent, the highest of any large city or census-designated place in the United States outside of Puerto Rico.
History
Original East Los Angeles
Historically, when it was founded in 1873, the neighborhood northeast of downtown known today as Lincoln Heights was originally named East Los Angeles, but in 1917, residents voted to change the name to its present name. Today, it is considered part of Eastside Los Angeles, the geographic region east of the Los Angeles River that includes three neighborhoods within the city of Los Angeles (Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights) and the unincorporated community in Los Angeles County known today as "East Los Angeles". Lincoln Heights is northwest of present-day East Los Angeles. When Lincoln Heights, the first Eastside subdivision created in 1873, changed its name in 1917, Belvedere (Belvedere Gardens and Belvedere Heights) and surrounding unincorporated county areas were given the moniker of East Los Angeles. By the 1930s, most maps had started to label the Belvedere area as "East Los Angeles".
Belvedere
thumb|left|1910 [[Janss Investment Company ad for Belvedere Heights property sales]]
The cornerstone of the first building of Occidental College was laid in September 1887 on Rowan Street. In 1896, the building was destroyed by fire. but would later be rechristened Belvedere Heights. Belvedere Heights, at its launch in 1905, extended from the L.A. city limits (Indiana Av.) on the west to Rowan Av. on the east, from Aliso St. on the south to Wabash Av. on the north, the northwestern portion of today's East Los Angeles, Belvedere township included the territory that in 1902 became the city of Montebello.
By 1922 Janss advertised that it had sold 6000 lots there and that 35,000 people lived in Belvedere Heights. Buildings that were described as being in Belvedere Heights included the junior high school on Record between Brooklyn and Michigan, now called Belvedere Middle School.
In February 1921 Janss announced that it had purchased adjacent to the end of the streetcar line on Stephenson Avenue, now Whittier Boulevard, south of Belvedere Heights, and divided the empty land into housing lots of square-mile grid cells. Janss called the new tract Belvedere Gardens,
The area was able to avoid being annexed into the City of Los Angeles because of a private groundwater utility formed in 1926 now known as the California Water Service, which would later become a customer of the Metropolitan Water District. Prior to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, governing bodies would set property taxes independently, which led to a cumulative overlapping rate including bond taxes for large infrastructure projects such as the building of the Port of Los Angeles. However, unincorporated areas were often forced to incorporate or be annexed into these taxing entities in order to obtain critical municipal services such as water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct. For decades, the lack of a city property tax and bond taxes made East Los Angeles a tax haven for the working class.
New name: East Los Angeles
In 1932, local business leaders gave the name East Los Angeles to Belvedere and adjacent areas (that had been known as Belvedere Gardens, Belvedere Heights, Laguna, etc.) However, in 1937 the Automobile Club of Southern California put up three large signs, "Belvedere Gardens". This led to the business leaders uprooting the signs, with a "burial ceremony" for the signs with 150 state, county, and city officials attending, and they rechristened the area East Los Angeles. Several county buildings were renamed in line with the new appellation. At that time the area had 75,000 residents and was "declared to be the largest unincorporated locality in the world."
East Los Angeles was a significant site during the Chicano Movement, which included the East L.A. Walkouts in 1968 and the National Chicano Moratorium, in which Ruben Salazar was killed.
Multiple campaigns by residents have been made for cityhood for East Los Angeles, such as in 2010.
Geography
East Los Angeles is located immediately east of the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles, south of the El Sereno district of Los Angeles, north of the city of Commerce, and west of the cities of Monterey Park and Montebello.
The unincorporated area known as City Terrace<!-- blacklisted link city-data.com --> occupies the northern part of the CDP. The Census Bureau definition of the area may not precisely correspond to the local understanding of the community.
Climate
East Los Angeles. has a very warm hot-summer Mediterranean climate.