AMERICAN DREAM AND ANGELENOS
Sepulveda is a name of families of Spanish descent.One
of huge people who came here.
A
Sepulveda family was prominent in the early days of Los Angeles, California and many features
of the area are named for a family of that name. Notable features include: a
neighborhood North Hills, Sepulveda Boulevard - the longest municipal street in the world (Guinness Book of Records), over 60 miles, Sepulveda
Dam, a flood control dam in the San Fernando Valley which regulates the Sepulveda
Basin.
The City
of Los Angeles is the second-largest
city in the United States, its one of the world's most important
economic, cultural, and entertainment
centers. It was incorporated as a city in California on April 4, 1850, when the city's
population was only 1,610, and is the county seat
of Los Angeles County. As of the 2000 census, it has a
population of 3,694,820, but a May 1, 2005 California Department of Finance estimate shows with the
metropolitan area at 17,545,623. The city is also large by geographic standards
since it sprawls over more than 1200 square kilometers, making it physically
larger than New York City and Chicago. In addition, Los Angeles hosted two Olympic
Games (in 1932
and 1984) and is
home to world-renowned scientific and cultural institutions.
The
city is one of the biggest entry points for immigrants to
the United States, making it one of the most culturally diverse places in the
world. People are attracted to the city for its warm weather, its
vibrant lifestyle,
its unique energy, and the opportunity to realize the "American
Dream."
The American
Dream is the idea (often associated with the Protestant work ethic) that through hard
work, courage and determination one can achieve prosperity. These were values
held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent
generations. What the American Dream has become is a question under constant
discussion, and some believe that it has led to an overemphasis on comparative
material wealth as the only measure of success and happiness.
Many
early American prospectors headed west of the Rocky
Mountains to buy acres of cheap land in hopes of finding deposits of gold.
The American Dream was a driving factor not only in the gold rushes
of the mid to late 1800s, but also in the waves of immigration throughout
that century and the following.
Impoverished
western Europeans escaping the Irish potato famines in Ireland, the Highland clearances in Scotland and the
aftermath of Napoleon
in the rest of Europe came to America to escape a poor quality of life at home.
They wanted to embrace the promise of financial security and constitutional
freedom they had heard existed so widely in the United States.
During
the mid-to-late ninteenth century prolific dime novel
writer Horatio Alger, Jr. became famous for his novels
that idealized the American Dream.
Nearing
the twentieth century, major industrialist
personalities became the new model of the American Dream. Perhaps the great
American capitalists Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. This acquisition of great
wealth appeared to demonstrate that if you had talent, intelligence, and a
willingness to work extremely hard, you were likely to be a success in life as
a result.
Throughout
the 19th century, immigrants fled the monarchies of Western
Europe and their post-feudal economies, which actively oppressed the peasant
class. These economic systems required high levels of taxation, which stymied
development. The American economy, however, was built up by people who were
consciously free of these constraints.
Settlement
in the new world provided hope for egalitarianism. Martin Luther King invoked the American Dream in
what is perhaps his most famous speech:
"Let us not wallow in the valley of despair,
I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of
today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the
American Dream
History of Los Angeles, California
The
Los Angeles coastal area was occupied by the Tongva, Chumash, and even
earlier Native American peoples for
thousands of years. The Spanish arrived in 1542, when Juan Cabrillo visited the area. In 1769, the Spanish
returned to California to stay. Father Juan Crespi
described a "beautiful river", which the explorers named in Spanish
"El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del
Río de Porciúncula", English:
"The Village of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Porciuncula River".
The Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
was founded in 1771,
thus establishing a permanent presence in the area and securing Spanish territory.
On September 4,
1781, settlers from the
San Gabriel Mission founded the town ", showing Franciscan
affiliation. It remained a small mission and ranch town for
decades.
Mexican
independence from Spain was achieved in the 1820s, but the
greatest change took place in present-day Montebello
after the Battle of Rio San Gabriel in 1847, which decided the
fate of Los Angeles. Yankees gained control after they flooded into California
during the Gold
Rush and secured the subsequent admission of California into the United
States.
Los
Angeles was incorporated as a city in 1850. Railroads
arrived when the Southern Pacific completed its line to Los Angeles
in 1876. Oil was discovered in 1892, and by 1923, Los Angeles was
supplying one-quarter of the world's petroleum.
Even
more important to the city's growth was water. In 1913, William Mulholland completed the aqueduct that assured the city's growth and
led to the annexation by the City of Los Angeles, starting in 1915, of dozens of
neighboring communities without water supplies of their own. A
somewhat fictionalized account of the Owens Valley Water
War can be found in the motion picture Chinatown.
In the
1920s the motion
picture and aviation
industries both flocked to Los Angeles and helped to further develop it. The
city was the proud host of the 1932 Summer Olympics. World War
II brought new growth and prosperity to the city, although many of its Japanese-American
residents were transported to internment
camps for the duration of the war. This period also saw the arrival of the German exiles, which
included such notables as Thomas Mann, Bertolt
Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger. The postwar years saw an even
greater boom as urban sprawl expanded into the San Fernando Valley.
The Watts riots
in 1965 reminded the
country of the deep racial divisions that even the nation's youngest city
faced. The XXIII Olympiad was successfully hosted in Los
Angeles in 1984. The
city was once again tested by the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. A city-wide
vote on San Fernando Valley and Hollywood secession was defeated in 2002