Climate, cheap real estate, and the 1849 gold rush brought early Anglo-American settlers to La Ciudad de Los Ángeles in the second half of the 19th century, shortly after the cessation of the California campaign of the Mexican-American war.
In 1892 Edward James Doheny discovered oil at the intersection of 2nd & Glendale in what would soon be known as the Los Angeles Oil Field. Within the year 120 derricks had sprung up in the surrounding landscape of homes and businesses, crowding the 50 x 150 foot town lots with as many as four wells each in a wholly unregulated production environment. By 1900, Los Angeles has become the oil capital of the west, with a population of 100,000. In 1901, production at the LA Oil Field peaked with 1,150 wells producing 1.8 mil-lion gallons of oil, equivalent to current day Saudi Arabia in the era’s global market share.