Sonoratown was a neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, California.
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Sonoratown was home to many migrants from the northern Mexican state of Sonora in the mid 1800s.[1][2] Many settled there after having made their way to northern California during the gold rush. The neighborhood became a slum as more and more settlers arrived. In 1914 occurred one of the first marijuana drug raids in Sonoratown, in which police raided two "dream gardens" and confiscated a wagonload of the product.[3]
However it was also recognized as a historic site; a 1914 guidebook to Los Angeles told tourists, “Some of the [Sonoratown] homes are old adobe houses that have stood there since the town was young. Sometimes an old adobe is back in a yard, almost out of sight, sometimes it has been so freshened by paint or whitewash as to be hardly recognized, but a sharp eye will find them.”[4]
In the early 1900s the Mexican community began to disappear as that part of Downtown Los Angeles became a desirable industrial center, with many rail yards. Later it was replaced with the New Chinatown.[5]
There were significant populations of French and especially Italian heritage, which were almost entirely dispersed in the course of postwar suburbanization.[1]
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