Southern California

Lore & Background

Following the acquisition of the territory of California by the United States, several pro-slavery politicians attempted to arrange the division of Alta California at 36 degrees, 30 minutes, the line of the Missouri Compromise. Instead, the passing of the Compromise of 1850 enabled California to be admitted to the Union as a free state, preventing the southern half of California from becoming its own separate slave state. Subsequently, southern Californians dissatisfied with inequitable taxes and land laws attempted several times in the 1850s to achieve a separate statehood or territorial status separate from northern California. The only successful proposal, the Pico Act of 1859, was passed by the California State Legislature and signed by State Governor John B. Weller. It was approved overwhelmingly by nearly 75 percent of southern California voters to form the proposed Territory of Colorado. The proposal was sent to Washington, D.C., with a strong advocate in Senator Milton Latham. However, the secession crisis following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the subsequent American Civil War led to the proposal never coming to a vote.

In Their Own Story

The 110 freeway was a river of brake lights, a slow-motion ocean of red and white, and somewhere in the middle of that river a 1987 Buick Regal with a faded purple stripe along its flank was crawling toward the Forum. The driver had been a Kings fan since '83, since the night Sittler buried a slap shot from the blue line and the entire Inglewood crowd lost its collective mind. He was forty-three now, his hands still calloused from the steering wheel, his radio tuned to a station that played no hockey but played the right kind of silence for a Tuesday drive. The air smelled of exhaust and the faint ghost of sea salt that always crept up from the coast. He didn't need a podcast. He didn't need a highlight reel. He needed to be in that building, in that row, feeling the ice spray hit his knuckles when a puck ricocheted off the glass. He needed the specific, bone-deep thud of a stick on a Zamboni's blade. He needed the crowd to roar in a frequency that only a Southern California crowd could produce—half surf-town chant, half downtown growl, all of it drenched in the particular golden light that LA throws through the upper deck windows at 7:45 on a winter evening. The Regal merged. The Forum loomed. He was home.

Reader's Guide

Southern California encompasses eight metropolitan areas (MSAs), three of which together form the Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area (CSA) with over 18 million people, the second-biggest CSA after the New York CSA. These three MSAs are the Los Angeles metropolitan area (Los Angeles and Orange counties, with 13.3 million people), the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including the Coachella Valley cities, with 4.3 million people), and the Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura metropolitan area (0.8 million people). In addition, Southern California contains the San Diego metropolitan area with 3.3 million people, Bakersfield metro area with 0.9 million, and the Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and El Centro (Imperial County) metropolitan areas. The Southern California Megaregion (or megalopolis) is larger still, extending northeast into Las Vegas, Nevada and south across the Mexican border into Tijuana.

Did You Know?

• Southern California has a population of 23.76 million residents as of the 2020 census.
• The motion picture, television and music industry are centered in the Los Angeles area in Southern California.
• Southern California is home to a large surf and skateboard culture, with companies such as Vans, Volcom, Quiksilver, No Fear, Stüssy, and Body Glove headquartered there.
• The first modern-era triathlon was held in San Diego's Mission Bay in 1974.
• In 1900, the Los Angeles Times defined Southern California as including 'the seven counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, and Santa Barbara.'