Mexico achieves independence from Spain. News of the war’s end reaches Los Angeles in 1822.

Spanish corporal José María Verdugo (née Berdugo) creates Rancho San Rafael. Verdugo receives a 36,000-acre land grant from the Spanish crown, encompassing present-day Glendale, Burbank, Highland Park, and the future site of Taylor Yard. Rancho San Rafael will be subdivided several times until its eventual dissolution in 1887.

A group of the pueblo’s first residents complete the original zanja—an open, earthen ditch that delivers water to the pueblo. A brush dam, or toma, pools water, which then runs along an elevated slope down to the pueblo. The flow splits into multiple ditches, carrying water to various portions of lowland. Placed close to present-day…

Juan Crespí, the designated diarist for the Portolá expedition, records his encounter with the Rio Porciúncula, or Los Angeles River: A “good-sized full-flowing river,” near the Arroyo Seco, “with very good water, pure and fresh, flowing through another very pleasant green valley lying westward,” and a “river bed about seven yards wide [that] flows from…

The expedition of Gaspar de Portolá becomes the first recorded European exploration of the interior of California. On August 2, 1769, an expedition convoy crosses the Arroyo Seco and reaches the LA River. They camp at what later becomes known as Taylor Yard, along the river, and encounter the oak grove village of Yaanga.

The Spanish crown claims the territory by “right of discovery” after Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explores the Pacific coast.

Yaanga is the largest of the Tongva villages built on the banks of the LA River. Yaanga stretched from what is now the Glendale Narrows section of the LA River to downtown Los Angeles, with many verdant oak groves. The initial settlement is close to where Los Angeles City Hall stands today. Other Tongva villages…

Indigenous peoples now known as the Aciachemen, Chumash, Tataviam, and Tongva Tribal Nations steward and develop communities in the Southern California Bight, 430 miles of coastal land that stretches from Santa Barbara to San Diego. The Chumash homelands are north of the Santa Monica Mountains and include the headwaters of the Los Angeles River.