LA Was Once Largest Farming County
By Joe Guzzardi
For the lucky few among us who grew up during the 1950s in Southern California, and specifically around the Pacific Palisades/Malibu area, the non-stop video coverage of the massive wildfire was impossible to watch. My thoughts took me back to when the state lived up to its golden image. In their book “From Cows to Cement,” authors Rachel Surls and Judith Gerberk documented Los Angeles County’s agricultural history which was once America’s largest farming county. Today, L.A., once a silkworm center, is the U.S.’ largest urban county. After World War II, around 1945, people moved to Los Angeles in waves to build factories, large office buildings, cookie cutter housing and other edifices that drove land prices ever-upward. Values slowly but inevitably rose; land boom followed land boom. As property assessments soared, farmers couldn’t resist the lucrative opportunity to cash in. A less esthetic L.A. survived, with farmland replaced by cement. By 2023, Los Angeles County had become the nation’s most populous, with nearly 10 million residents, more than about 25% of California’s total population. In 1950, the county’s population was 4.2 million. Today, L.A. County is one of the nation’s largest, covering more than 4,000 square miles. If it were a state, it would be the country’s eighth largest.
Underneath Los Angeles’ urban cement nightmare lay thousands of acres of once-productive farmland. Farming was Los Angeles’ hub from its 1781 founding into the mid-twentieth century. Over the four decades between 1909 to 1949, Los Angeles grew from a farming community into an agricultural powerhouse. Farmers experimented with a multitude of crops, from fruits and vegetables, to hemp, cotton, and flowers. Livestock was important too, with major stockyards that competed with Chicago and Omaha. Hundreds of dairy and poultry farms flourished.
Intrastate transplants went west for more than business opportunities. The sunny and warm weather was a lure. To mid-western arrivals, the beaches were unparalleled. California’s coastline which stretches out over 840 miles has over 420 public beaches, the star gem of which is Malibu. Beach Boys’ songs and movies like “Beach Blanket Bingo” drew a picture of non-stop fun in the sun. All age groups that in-migrated to California found their way to the beach to suntan, fish off the pier, dine in one of the popular just-caught fish restaurants or to hang out, but also to build homes as close to the beaches as their pocketbooks could afford. The celebrities and other wealthy elite built on the ocean’s edge unconcerned about the mudslides that heavy precipitation brings.
The recent Palisades fires followed by pounding rains have created an ecological threat to the Pacific Ocean. Debris and toxins released from the fires will damage kelp forests and lead to destructive algae blooms that snuff out ocean life. The much-needed rain will mark the beginning of the worst effects in the ocean. “The Malibu coastline is extremely unique,” said Dan Pondella, Occidental College biology professor and Southern California Marine Institute research director, “It’s probably the highest density of fishes throughout Southern California.” When rain mixes with debris from burn scars, a slurry of mud, rocks and rubble pour into ocean, which Pondella said acts like both sandpaper and a blackout curtain for the fragile kelp forests. “You’ll see anything from reduced light, which limits photosynthesis in plant and algal growth, to reefs actually being completely buried in ash,” he said. The ash layer remains in the environment for a long time. When the Woolsey Fire tore through Malibu in 2018, it dumped thousands of tons of ash into the ocean, which Pondella’s team was still finding in reefs five years later. More bad news: Wildlife officials reported that a toxic algae outbreak has left as many as 50 sea lions sickened and stranded on Malibu beaches in the past week.
For the next few years as clean up and rebuilding continue, Malibu’s good times are over. When friends ask what it was like to grow up near California’s beaches, I can’t come up with a description that would do my experience justice. I simply say, “I wish you’d been there with me to appreciate it.”
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
LA Was Once Largest Farming County
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