Now the largest city
in the United States, Los Angeles began in 1781
as settlement of outcasts from Mexico whom the priests of nearby Mission
San Gabriel considered lazy drunkards. Not until the late 1880's,
when a second rail line arrived from Santa
Fe, connecting Los Angeles directly to eastern markets, did this
community of farmers and ranchers shake off its centuries-long isolation
and begin attracting the flood of new residents who would transform
it into an international metropolis.
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