Located well within the Greater Los Angeles metropolis, Arcadia is 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 2015, Arcadia was ranked 6th in the nation on CNN Money Magazine‘s list of towns with highest median home costs. In 2014 Time Magazine ranked Arcadia as one of the Top 50 Best Places to live in the United States.  Arcadia’s Upper Rancho neighborhood was ranked the 23rd richest neighborhood in Southern California by Business Insider in 2014; out ranking Orange County’s Newport Beach with a median household income of $310,779. In 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek named Arcadia as one of the “Best Places to Raise Your Kids: 2010”.

The Arcadia Unified School District is one of just 22 school districts in California being honored by the College Board with placement on the 7th Annual AP® District Honor Roll.  To receive this national recognition, the Arcadia Unified School District had to, since 2014, increase the number of students participating in AP courses while also increasing or maintaining the percentage of students earning AP Exam scores of 3 or higher. Reaching these impressive milestones demonstrates that Arcadia Unified is successfully identifying motivated and academically prepared students who are ready for AP courses.

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. A Tongva settlement site within present day Arcadia was known as Alyeupkigna (or Aluupkenga).

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 an estimated 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,[19] 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.

The rancho changed owners several times before being acquired by Gold Rush immigrant, businessman, and major regional land owner Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin in 1875. Baldwin purchased 8,000 acres (32 km2) of Rancho Santa Anita for $200,000. Upon seeing the area, he gasped “By Gads! This is paradise!” Upon buying the land, Baldwin chose to make the area his home and immediately started erecting buildings and cultivating the land for farming, orchards, and ranches. Baldwin built the Queen Anne Cottage for his fourth wife and himself in 1885-1886, now preserved within the Arboretum. In 1885, the main line of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad, in which Baldwin was a stockholder, was opened through the ranch, making subdivision of part of the land into a town site practical. Later this the rail line became a Santa Fe Railroad line. In 1889, on a site just north of the corner of First Avenue and St. Joseph Street, adjacent to the Santa Fe tracks, Baldwin opened the 35 room Hotel Oakwood to be the centerpiece of his new town. The first liquor license was issued to his oldest daughter Clara Baldwin. This becomes more significant when one understands that Pasadena, which borders Arcadia, was dry from its founding in 1886. In 1890 the Rancho Santa Anita Depot was built serve Lucky Baldwin’s interests, and the people and needs of the town.

History abstract above is courtesy of the Wikipedia.

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