Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971 (1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1914, 1900s, 1900, 1899, 1890s, 1875, 1870s
"Whatever man has done subsequently to the climate and environment of Southern California, it remains one of the ecological wonders of the habitable world. Given water to pour on its light and otherwise almost desert soil, it can be made to produce a reasonable facsimile of Eden. Some of the world's most spectacular gardens are in Los Angeles, where the southern palm will literally grow next to northern conifers, and it was this promise of an ecological miracle that was the area's first really saleable product--the 'land of perpetual spring.'
"But to produce instant Paradise you have to add water-and keep on adding it. Once the scant local sources had been tapped, wasted, and spoiled, the politics of hydrology became a pressing concern, even a deciding factor in fixing the political boundaries of Los Angeles. The City annexed the San Fernando Valley, murdered the Owens Valley in its first great raid on hinterland waters under William Mulholland, and its hydrological frontier is now on the Colorado River. Yet fertile watered soil is no use if it is inaccessible; transportation was to be the next great shaper of Los Angeles after land and water. From the laying of the first railway down to the port at Wilmington just over a century ago, transport has been an obsession that grew into a way of life." p. 31
[Pages 32 and 33] Map of the first five railways out of the pueblo, and the water-distribution grid isn't all that specific but does show the 1875 railroad line to Santa Monica.
"In the decades on either side of 1900 the economic basis of Angeleno life was transformed. While land and field-produce remained the established basis of wealth, an important new primary industry was added- oil . . . commercial working did not begin until the mid-nineties and large-scale exploitation grew throughout the first quarter of the present century . . . p. 34
[At the same time, these inter-urban commuter lines had been conglomerated into the Pacific Electric Railway, sketching the Los Angeles to be.]
" . . . Los Angeles also acquired a major secondary industry and a most remarkable tertiary. The secondary was its port. There had always been harbour facilities on its coast, but the building of the Point Fermin breakwater to enclose the harbour at Wilmington/San Pedro from 1899 onwards was in good time to catch the greatly expanded trade promoted by the opening of the short sea-route . . . through the Panama Canal after 1914." p. 34