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About L.A.
L.A.'s Auto Manufacturing Past
Studebaker Plant in Vernon

Los Angeles County once rivaled Detroit as a center for auto manufacturing.

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How Much Rainfall Has Fallen on L.A. This Season?

Rainfall, Los Angeles


This rain season is, so far, not only L.A.'s wettest season in 18 years, it may just end up ranking among L.A.'s ten wettest seasons in 146 years.

385 New Vintage L.A. Postcards

We call vintage postcards the "Instagram of the past" and we've recently added hundreds more of these to our already sizable collection of vintage L.A. postcards. These offer not only a colorful tour of L.A. County's past, but many include long-ago messages from L.A. residents and visitors to family and friends across the country.

COVID-19 in Los Angeles County

COVID-19, Coronavirus, Los Angeles County

Weekly Report By the Numbers

Our Story in Pictures
Woman on Emergency Freeway Phone, 1970

Photo from the LA Times Photographic Collection, at the UCLA Digital Library.

1970. Long before cell phones, a woman on a Los Angeles freeway uses an emergency freeway call box to summon help. The first such solar-powered call boxes in California were installed in 1962 along 10 miles of Los Angeles County freeway. At their peak, there were 4,000 emergency call boxes in Los Angeles County and 15,000 throughout the entire state. During the latter half of the 1990s, however, as more people began using cell phones, use of call boxes dramatically declined. Most have since been removed. Emergency call boxes may now be found only in areas with poor cell reception.

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Did You Know?
Georgia Ann Robinson, African American, Police Officer, LAPD

She was one of our nation's first African American woman police officers. She was also an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department.

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