Route 66 - Los Angeles, California

 

Your last stop before your last stop - you've made it almost all the way across Route 66! 

Los Angeles, California, is the second largest urban area in the U.S. It extends more than 40mi from the mountains to the sea.

The Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá visited the site in 1769. On Sept. 4, 1781, the Mexican provincial governor, Filipe de Neve, founded "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles," meaning "The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels." The pueblo became the capital of the Mexican province, Alta California, and it was the last place to surrender to the United States at the time of the American occupation in 1847. By the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico ceded California to the United States, and Los Angeles was incorporated as a city in 1850.

Los Angeles is a major hub of shipping, manufacturing, industry, and finance. It is world-renowned in the entertainment and communications fields.

In the Santa Monica mountains is perhaps the most famous American monument on this side of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty - the Hollywood Sign. Erected in 1923 as a real estate advertisement - then left behind - it eventually became synonymous with the blossoming film industry and a symbol of aspiration to budding hopefuls. It was also connected with tragedy - Peg Entwistle was a Welsh-born actress whose stage career in her adopted America drew considerable acclaim; she even drew a 17-year-old Bette Davis to tell her mother, "I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle". Nobody knows what caused Peg to jump to her death from the H of the sign - her career was going well, and her final jobs were a film with Myrna Loy and Irene Dunn and a play opposite Humphrey Bogart - but on 18 September 1932, her body was found in a ravine below the sign. She was only 24 years old.