Arcadia is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States located about 13 miles (21 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley and at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. It is the site of the Santa Anita Park racetrack and home to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. The city had a population of 56,364 at the 2010 census, up from 53,248 at the 2000 census. The city is named after Arcadia, Greece.
In 2012, Arcadia was ranked 7th in the nation on CNN Money magazine’s list of towns with highest median home costs.
Arcadia’s Upper Rancho neighborhood was ranked the 23rd richest neighborhood in Southern California by Business Insider in 2014, with a mean household income of $310,779.
History
Native American
For over 8,000 years the site of Arcadia was part of the homeland of the Tongva people (“Gabrieliño” tribe), a Californian Native American tribe whose territory spanned the greater Los Angeles Basin, and the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys. Their fluid borders stretched between: the Santa Susana Mountains, San Bernardino Mountains, and San Gabriel Mountains in the north; the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills in the west; the San Jacinto Mountains and Santa Ana Mountains in the east; and the coast and Catalina Island (Pimu) in the south. A Tongva settlement site within present day Arcadia was known as Alyeupkigna (or Aluupkenga).
Rancho period
The town’s site became part of the Spanish Mission San Gabriel Arcángel lands in 1771. After Indian Reductions to become Mission Indians, the Tongva were known as the Gabrieliños after the Mission’s name. and under whose control these people worked during the mission period in California. Currently there are 1,700 people self-identifying as members of the Tongva or Gabrieliño tribe.
The Mexican land grant for Rancho Santa Anita was issued to Perfecto Hugo Reid and his Tongva wife, Victoria Bartolomea Comicrabit, in 1845. It was named after a family relation, Anita Cota, on his wife’s side. Reid documented the Gabrieliño Native Americans in a series of letters written in 1852, and served as a delegate to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention. In 1847, Reid sold Rancho Santa Anita to his Rancho Azusa neighbor, Henry Dalton.