What? Los Angeles was the original wine country of California, leading the state’s wine production for more than a century? Los Angeles County was the agricultural center of North America until the 1950s? And where today’s freeways soar, cows calmly chewed their cud? How could that be? Los Angeles, the capital of asphalt and Kleig lights, was once a paradise filled with grapevines and bovines, so abundant with Nature’s gifts that no one could imagine a more pastoral place?
Los Angeles County was the center of an agricultural empire. Today, it is the nation’s most populous urban metropolis. What happened? Where did the green go?