“‘Nature has done everything for it and man very little,’ wrote one correspondent of Los Angeles in 1867. ‘Beneath the wide verandas the people sit, and about two-thirds of the population seem to spend the day smoking in front of the hotel and going in for drinks.’ That same author then went on to catalog the region’s agricultural bounty in great detail: ‘the richest gardens, vineyards, orange groves, and lemon, fig and olive plantations which can be seen in America.'”