Homicides by firearm are definitely up in Los Angeles County, as they are across the country. However, the numbers are not nearly as bad as they were in the past.
We call vintage postcards the "Instagram of the past" and we've recently added hundreds more to our collection of vintage L.A. postcards (now a total of 940 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.
Photo from the L.A. Times Photographic Collection at UCLA Library.
1964, Mrs. Arthur Atsma in an authentic Frisian (Dutch) costume and her daughter, Alicia, in Dairy Valley (future Cerritos) on morning chores.
By the 1950s, the area now known as Cerritos was a key center of dairy production in Southern California. When the city, originally named Dairy Valley, incorporated in 1956, it counted 32,000 cows, 83,000 chickens, 9,600 turkeys and 105 acres of row crops. Many of the dairy farmers were immigrants from the Portuguese Azores and the Netherlands. Dairy Valley farmers had managed to carve themselves away from a pro-development plan for a larger Artesia. They worried that rapid development surrounding them would squeeze out their farms and industry and wipe away their way of life. Incorporating as the City of Dairy Valley allowed them to prioritize farming and agriculture. This attracted even more dairy farmers, quickly ballooning the new city's cow population to 100,000, plus 106,300 chickens.
By 1962, Dairy Valley's success at holding back Southern California's tsunami of home-building was faltering. The number of cows declined to 53,000. Dairymen were retiring or relocating to the Chino area or California's Central Valley. In 1965, Dairy Valley voters decided to de-prioritize agricultural zoning. Two years later, they changed the name of their city to Cerritos, seeking to shed their dairy farm image, adopting the name of their local community college, established 12 years earlier. This signaled the end of dairy farming in the area. Within a few years, the last cow was shipped out of Cerritos. There was no need to pity the dairy farmers, however. They made a fortune selling their land to developers.
Four historic and accomplished LGBTQ scientists in Los Angeles County.
