Department of Public Social Services history

After a two-year period of hostilities with Mexico beginning in 1846, the area came under United States control.

The first steamer to visit San Pedro was the Goldhunter in 1849.

The people of Los Angeles County on April 1, 1850 asserted their newly won right of self-government and elected a three-man Court of Sessions as their first governing body.

In 1852 the Legislature dissolved the Court of Sessions and created a five-member Board of Supervisors.

In the winter of 1861–62, a flood left the western part of the Los Angeles basin looking like a chain of lakes dotted with islands.

The construction of a railroad from Los Angeles to the harbor in 1869 gave a fresh impetus to the development of agricultural resources in the county.

By 1870 their numbers grew to more than 4,000.

Long Beach is also incorporated for the first time, but is disincorporated years later in 1897 (but then reincorporated before the end of that year). Heavy floods occur.

William Denton discovers the first saber-tooth cat fossil at La Brea Tar Pits (once referred to as saber-tooth tigers to enhance the image of their ferocity). Later, in 1901, Union Oil geologist William Orcutt uncovers more fossils.

How it was then - The California Department of Social Services began humbly as a six- member Board of Charities and Corrections in 1903.

By July 1905, Chandler’s L.A. Times began to warn the voters of Los Angeles that the county would soon dry up unless they voted bonds for building the aqueduct.

San Francisco is originally set as the launching point for the first Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii, but, due to the destruction by the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the race launches from Point Fermin in Los Angeles to Hawaii.

In September 1907, construction began on a massive aqueduct that would transport water from the lake all the way to Los Angeles.

First modern factory building in Los Angeles built for Cohn, Goldwater and Company, 1909.

Both Biograph and Selig-Polyscope began shooting in in Los Angeles by 1910, but it was the arrival of director Cecil B. DeMille that really set LA on its path to movie mecca.

Later in 1911 the Long Beach harbor was established and the port at San Pedro was also added to give Los Angeles a position in the international trade market.

At the aqueduct’s opening on November 5, 1913, around 40,000 people watched as the lake water began to flow into the waiting San Fernando Reservoir in Sylmar. “There it is—take it!” a triumphant Mulholland exclaimed.

In 1914, DeMille filmed The Squaw Man, the first feature film to be shot in Los Angeles, for the newly formed Jesse L. Laskey Feature Play Company.

By 1917 Los Angeles had tripled in size by adding the entire San Fernando Valley and the district of Palms.

The area also had excellent dairy farms, including the world’s largest Guernsey herd in the 1920s.

Originally spelling out Hollywoodland, it was built as a temporary advertisement in 1923 for a new upper-middle class neighborhood snuggled in the hills of Beachwood Canyon.

During the next 80 years the influx of blacks grew, and by 1930 Los Angeles was home to the largest black community on the Pacific Coast.

Over 24 million persons, the needy aged, blind, permanently and totally disabled and dependent children, have received public assistance since 1936, when federal grants-in-aid were made available to the states.

Except for a nostalgic 1939 launch from San Francisco, the race has started in Southern California since.

But in 1950, Chavez Ravine was slated to be the site of a massive public housing project called Elysian Park Heights, which would provide 3,600 affordable apartments.

On Black Friday, May 9, 1959, the remaining families of Chavez Ravine were met with bulldozers and sheriffs wielding eviction orders.

The aging, increasingly unprofitable and empty Red Car system was not taken over by National City but was discontinued in 1961 by LA’s Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Dodger Stadium opened on April 10, 1962.

When the Immigration Act of 1965 opened the door to new immigrants, it initiated dramatic changes in the area.

The Fair Housing Act formally deemed both activities illegal in 1968, but their deep-seeded scars remain.

On April 29, 1992, four police officers charged in the beating were acquitted of using excessive force in the King beating.

In 1995, CalWIN originally replaced Welfare CDS (Case Data System) in order to provide sufficient automation to support tracking of time-on-aid federal requirements.

In 1996, the C-IV Consortium established itself as a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) by Agreement with the member Counties.

The 2000 census showed the area was home to 4.2 million people of Latino/Hispanic origin—only Mexico City had a larger number.

In 2001, C-IV contracted with Accenture to design, develop, and implement the C-IV System – a web-based, automated system to manage the increasing complexity of public assistance and employment programs.

As The Guardian’s Colin Marshall explained in 2016, “One can confidently accuse General Motors and their National City Lines of nothing worse than scheming to profit from a trend already in motion.”