Southern California experienced tremendous growth in the 1880s, stimulated in part by the railroad. The Southern Pacific was the largest landowner in the state and it took a leading role in the advertising of California. The railroad's publicity department flooded the nation with articles and stories extolling the charms of California's natural beauty, climate, and romantic heritage (Dumke). The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad reached Los Angeles in the mid 1880s and began a rate war with the Southern Pacific (Rice). Passenger fares from the Midwest to southern California dropped from $125 to as little as $1. More than 200,000 newcomers arrived in southern California in 1887, th

The decade of the 1920s was a time of booming economic growth in California. Older industries expanded and new ones were founded. But the prosperity of the twenties was not well distributed. Proportionately, too much wealth was in profits and too little in wages. The income of many workers was so low that they couldn't afford to buy the products they produced. In other words, businesses produced more goods than could be consumed. This large supply of unsold products weakened the economy. The crash of the stock market in 1929 was followed by the worst depression in the history of California and the nation (Rice).

Many of the new Californians came from the Midwest, as they had in the 1880s, but by the 1920s significant numbers of Mexicans were coming to California to stay. During World War I, workers were in short supply. From 1914 through 1918, answering that demand, Mexicans came. By 1915, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were the largest group among California farm workers, suffering from poor working and living conditions and the labor bureau system growers used to keep wages down. The Mexican share of the population grew from 1.4 percent to 2.6 percent during the war. The Mexican Revolution against the Diaz oligarchy, which began in 1910 and continued until about 1918, also seems to have encouraged immigration, more for the sake of economic opportunities, which were few in Mexico while the revolution continued, than for fear of violence. By 1930, people of Mexican birth or ancestry made up 4.5 percent of the population of California (Starr).

Although railroad land grants discouraged a pattern of small family farms in California, they were a strong incentive for the railroads to encourage people in other parts of the country to visit or to settle in towns and cities. Tourists, of course, bought tickets on the rail lines and patronized restaurants and hotels built by railroads, while new homeowners helped the rail lines sell their land grants in small, profitable building lots (Dumke). If Easterners did not come to California to farm, they did come to California to live. The expansion of railways through Southern California in the 1880s prompted the calculated promotion of the region as a healthy, comfortable place to make a home. In the middle of the decade, there was even a price war for passenger travel,

Some topics in this essay:
Los Angeles, Southern California, Gold Rush, Los Angeles's, San Francisco, Yosemite Valley, Southern Pacific, Valley Pacific, Rice Businesses, Mexicans Mexican-Americans, los angeles, southern california, southern pacific, california farm, rail lines, land grants, yosemite valley, real estate, southern california experienced, california 1880s, california's natural, los angeles basin,