Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles

Faragher (Out of Many), a professor of history at Yale and a Southern California native, skillfully explores the history of California and Los Angeles during the middle of the 19th century. Following California’s establishment of statehood in 1850, Los Angeles “was one of the most violent towns in America.” Fascinated with court records and old newspapers, and taking for granted the violence of the frontier, Faragher devotes his attention to investigating “the structure, the culture, and the reproduction” of that violence, as well as the meaning it held. The greater Los Angeles area circa 1830 was an agricultural region of fewer than 3,000 people where Spanish-speaking, predominantly Catholic landowners (Californios) ruled a turbulent underclass of emancipados (converted natives) and a sprinkling of migrants. California’s government in distant Monterey was feeble; central authority in Mexico City was feebler still, making “outlaw justice” the norm. Matters hardly improved after the U.S.’s 1848 conquest, when U.S. laws and immigrants provided another source of conflict. The book begins with a murder and closes with another at the turn of the century, when increasing confidence in the legal system modestly reduced violence. The tireless violence Faragher chronicles may weary some readers, but persistence is rewarded with a vivid, disturbing portrait of early Los Angeles. Maps & photos. (Jan.)