The city of San Dimas, California, CA

San Dimas was originally inhabited by a Native American tribe called the Tongva. Their settlements were mostly along the coastline of Los Angeles County, northwest Orange County, and surrounding islands.

When the Spanish came to this area in 1771, they established the San Gabriel Mission. Indigenous inhabitants were converted and provided the Spanish labor. The land was hearty, and many orchards provided for the Spanish crown until 1833, when California fell into Mexico’s control and gave the San Gabriel Mission land to individuals.

In 1850, California became a state in the Union. San Dimas originated with Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar, who were each given one of the aforementioned individual Mexican land grants. The two men used the land predominantly for sheep and cattle ranching, initially.

Economic downturns and their deaths led to new owners, who established a more conventional town setting to capitalize on the expansion of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley railroad lines in the 1880s. This contemporaneous modernization led to the phasing-out of livestock and new land usages such as wheat & citrus crops, the latter of which became particularly widespread.

Ironically, as an early adopter of modernity, San Dimas has now become renowned for its quaint evocation of early 20th-century small-town life, along with a lively equestrian subculture in recent decades. Demographically, those of Latine-descent account for over 1/3rd of the city’s current residents, and this shift has also played a vital & amp; vibrant role in much of local culture business during the 21st century.