New Industry of SoCal In the early 20 th century, California’s economy and population expanded with the growth of new industries The economic and political center of California was shifting southward Whereas San Francisco had been the great city of the 19 th century, Los Angeles was emerging as the city of the 20 th The new industries: Oil industry & the Film industry

Oil Boom of the 1920s Origins of the Oil Industry - CA’s oil industry had its first boom in the 1860s but did not begin to reach major proportions until the 1890s Three tremendous discoveries in the early 1920s, all in the Los Angeles basin area: Huntington Beach, Santa Fe Springs, Signal Hill at Long Beach In 1925 the value of oil refinery products was twice the value of the output of CA’s second-largest branch of manufacturing, the canning and preserving of fruits and vegetables Edward L. Doheny in the scandal of the Elk Hills naval oil reserve

Oil wells in Los Angeles transformed residential neighborhoods into oil fields. This crowded scene is on Court Street in 1901

The Automobile Revolution Henry Ford introduced his Model T in 1908 The automobile encouraged better road construction – establishment of the Automobile Club of Southern California Financial support from the national government began with the Highway Aid Act of 1916, which provided dollar-matching grants to the states Mass motorization transformed California Los Angeles became the most thoroughly motorized and motor-conscious city in the world

By the mid -1920s, the massive coal and steel industries of the Midwest had made that region the center of the new automobile industry

By 1929, oil company’s such as Conoco were supplying road maps as part of the its campaign to boost tourism

The August 1924 cover of Redbook, a popular women’s magazine, portrays the kind of post adolescent girl who was making respectable families frantic. Flappers scandalized their middle class parents by breaking the old moral code

The Film Industry in CA Of the machines that changed American life in the first half of the 20 th century, the movie camera was as important as the internal combustion engine in the degree of its influence Early films were made in New York and New Jersey The first substantial American narrative film was The Great Train Robbery (1903) filmed in New Jersey The vicinities of Los Angeles also had other and more permanent advantages for moviemaking, and these appealed to members of the trust as well as to independents

Typical of the opulent movie palaces of the 1920s was Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood

Distinguished CA Writers Robinson Jeffers ( ) – California’s greatest poet. In 1916, he published Californians, a volume of poems written in unconventional poetic forms. Other works include Tamar (1924) and Roan Stallion (1925) John Steinbeck ( ) – one of the most important novelist of California. Steinbeck’s early writing had as distinctive a relation to the Salinas Valley and Monterey. Works include The Pastures of Heaven (1932), Tortilla Flat (1935), and The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

William Saroyan ( ) – novelist known for his creative spontaneity. His most famous novel, and probably his best, was The Human Comedy (1943). Several of his most successful works were plays, including The Time of Your Life, produced in 1939

Robinson Jeffers John Steinbeck William Saroyan