Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles

by John Mack Faragher

“John Mack Faragher is one fine writer, bringing early L.A. to life as the setting for all manner of horrific killings and gruesome justice. Eternity Street will keep you up at night ruminating on the roots of American violence.”―Richard Wightman Fox, University of Southern California, author of Lincoln’s Body: A Cultural History Eternity Street tells the story of a violent place in a violent time: the rise of Los Angeles from its origins as a small Mexican pueblo. In a masterful narrative, John Mack Faragher relates a dramatic history of conquest and ethnic suppression, of collective disorder and interpersonal conflict. Eternity Street recounts the struggle to achieve justice amid the turmoil of a loosely governed frontier, and it delivers a piercing look at the birth of this quintessentially American city. In the 1850s, the City of Angels was infamous as one of the most murderous societies in America. Saloons teemed with rowdy crowds of Indians and Californios, Mexicans and Americans. Men ambled down dusty streets, armed with Colt revolvers and Bowie knives. A closer look reveals characters acting in unexpected ways: a newspaper editor advocating lynch law in the name of racial justice; hundreds of Latinos massing to attack the county jail, determined to lynch a hooligan from Texas. Murder and mayhem in Edenic southern California. "There is no brighter sun…no country where nature is more lavish of her exuberant fullness," an Angeleno wrote in 1853. "And yet, with all our natural beauties and advantages, there is no country where human life is of so little account. Men hack one another to pieces with pistols and other cutlery as if God's image were of no more worth than the life of one of the two or three thousand ownerless dogs that prowl about our streets and make night hideous." This is L.A. noir in the act of becoming. 16 pages of illustrations

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Crime, Cultural Studies, Politics, Westerns

624 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2016

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 3 out of 5]

In early April 1840 Alcalde Tiburcio Tapia received a dispatch from Governor Alvarado instructing him to investigate the foreign residents of the Los Angeles district, detaining all those who were undocumented... On the morning of May 8 [a] vessel weighed anchor and set sail for Mexico with a total of forty-seven deportees - twenty-four Americans and twenty-three Britons...

The expulsion marked the first crackdown on undocumented immigrants in California history. Mexican law allowed for immigration and offered foreigners a pathway to citizenship, but required that they register with the authorities...Governor Alvarado labeled the vagabonds "malditos extranjeros," wicked foreigners, some of whom, he claimed, belonged to "a sordid and mercenary faction" that sought "to strip us of the riches of our treasures, our country and our lives."

The case of illegal immigration has been on the docket of the city of Los Angeles for well over a century. The shoe may have shifted foot, the verbiage - particularly that emanating from our nation's politicians - remains surprisingly the same.

John Mack Faragher, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, presents a book documenting the nascent days of the American presence in Southern California. We begin with the territory under Mexican rule in the mid-nineteenth century and carry it through conquest, the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the first flux of massive western emigration in or around the 1870s. Because it seems virtually impossible for any author tackling this region to produce a straight general history, we are once again enslaved to a theme. Faragher has chosen "the culture of violence" with specific focus on vigilantism as it was practiced by all and sundry.

This would have made an interesting essay...in the sense that the length of an essay is about as long as my attention to this topic would have held. But because I am starved for a solid, verifiable origin story of Los Angeles by someone (anyone!) who's researched that past, I plowed through these five hundred-plus pages of lynching, and lynching, and a little more lynching; sieving this river of text for a smattering of gold. And, to be fair, there was some. You do get a sense of the lives being lived at the periphery of all this mayhem. They were probably hard and quiet lives most of the time. Lived, of course, beneath the family names that grace the streets I travel today: Pico, Alvarado, Sepulveda, Figueroa, Olvera...there was even a Compton Creek.

Oh, for the book I long to read. Give it half a chance, fellas, and I promise you the story will tell itself.

[Book Riot Community]

Here's a little something to tide you Deadwood fans over while you wait for the movie! It's basically Deadwood in California. Except it's all true. And pre-Civil War. But still. There's lots of violence and reprehensible behavior. Eternity Street is the story of the founding of Los Angeles, and Faragher has done a splendid job describing the fight for justice in a lawless, bloodthirsty land.

Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/category/all-the-...

[Daniel Polansky]

I had forgotten that part of the fun of moving to a place is you get to submerge yourself in the history of the place you've moved, and this was a good way to start, a brisk six hundred pages about the slow development of the rule of law in Los Angeles. There's a bit about its early incorporation into the Spanish monastic system and then a swift overview of secularization and then a bit about the American 'liberation' Southern California during the Mexican-American war which is entertaining (in the fashion of all American conflicts prior to the Civil War, there's a lot of half-assedry as modestly incompetent military men struggle against the inconceivably vast distances involved, teams of shoeless marines being dispatched by a charge of vacqueros with horses, everyone getting drunk and running away after there's a fight, that sort of thing) but probably goes on a bit too long, after which it settles into the heart of the story, a discussion of how lynch law rose and fall in Los Angeles, and the creation and strengthening of societal norms against violence. That was a long fucking sentence. That kind of thing is right up my alley, and there were a lot of fun descriptions of horrible crimes sufficiently dated as to offer one frisson rather than nightmare. As it happens I actually bought this one for my phone, cause it was a lot in paper and also I'm trying to keep fewer books but if we're going to keep to my binary, if I owned it, I'd keep it.

[Jared Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up in Los Angeles county, most California history I learned, or remembered, had to do with the Spanish missions and the gold rush. All I could recall about missions was that they existed, were big churches, and taught the Indians. Gold rush history is mostly up north. There was no local history. So when I saw this book at work, I was excited to get a new look at my hometown's history. Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles does not disappoint!

This book feels like a big sweeping history of the state, even though the focus is really on the mid 1800s. Faragher gives enough background history to help understand the context of the cultural tension that dominated the county. The skirmishes during the Mexican-American war that he describes, are as clear or clearer than any war book I've read. The struggle for power between Fremont, Kearny, and Stockton was eye opening too.

The beautiful groves and chaparral hills made me miss California, but the author juxtapositions it with extreme violence. In many cases, the ill equipped justice system was unable to meet the demands of the citizens, so they took it into their own hands. While at times the vigilante's frustrations seemed understandable, the lynchings were always shocking. The book's climax is probably the Chinatown mob. I had never heard about this incident while growing up there, but it is clear now how important that night was. After a shootout between two rival Chinese gangs (there's a lot more to that story), one Anglo, and two Latino citizens were shot while trying to arrest the perpetrators. What followed that night was horrible, and was difficult to read. This was an eyewitness account Faragher includes in the book,

"During my youth my curiosity led me to see practically every lynching that took place in Los Angeles, and I had observed many gruesome sights. But the events that transpired that night were the most irresponsible and bloodthirsty I had ever witnessed...What I saw and heard as a boy of sixteen stands before my eyes to this day as a realization of the extent to which maddened human beings can go. Many of the rioters seemed actually inhuman." (476)

Eighteen Chinese citizens were lynched that night, and more injured and arrested. That night seemed to have turned the public opinion away from vigilante justice. I'm glad I read this book. I think anyone interested in criminology and law, sociology, and the history of the west would enjoy this book. Fans of this might also like Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.

[Allan Branstiter · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Mack Faragher has written an expansive and fascinating narrative of vigilante violence in Los Angeles during the 19th century. Weighing in at over 500 pages, this book features a cast of characters so large that the author provides readers with an actual cast of "Characters (in order of appearance)" with his preface. Overall, Faragher argues that early Los Angeles was a community forged by legal, extralegal, and illegal violence. Far from the middle-class metropolis city boosters liked to portray Los Angeles as during the end of the 19th century, it was a city struggling to bring order to the frontier through disorderly means. This is not the standard narrative of intrepid settlers carving out civilization in the wilderness in the name of "Manifest Destiny." Instead, Faragher convincingly shows us that Los Angeles's evolution was forged by endemic racial divisions, outlaws, human trafficking, vigilantes, dispossession, lynching, courtroom brawls, duels, and imperial conquest. This is a fascinating and delightfully written book, accessible to a wide variety of readers.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eternity Street is a very well researched book on the history of Los Angeles from around the 1830's through the mid 1870's. While some of this book was fascinating, and filled with extraordinary characters, and fascinating period of Los Angeles history, the book was also far too long, in that author felt that he had to tell every story, and every incident from the early days of Los Angeles. It felt like it was about 200 pages too long. Still worth reading, though.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s surprisingly compelling. An important bit of history which had fallen through the cracks. Los Angeles was not invented by William Mulholland. If you are interested in culture clashes, injustices, action, and California, this is highly recommended. Readable.

[Jonathan Cantor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extensively researched and highly readable. A sprawling book that comprehensively covers the time period. Though at the end of the book I did ask myself why I read it in the first place.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'What that astonishing people [the Americans] will next undertake, I cannot say; but in whatever enterprise they embark they will be successful.'" (quoting Jose Antonio Castro, commandant of California militia, 90)

"'Why should we shrink from incorporating ourselves with the happiest and freest nation in the world, destined soon to be the most wealthy and powerful? Why should we go abroad for protection when this great nation is our adjoining neighbor? When we join our fortunes to hers, we shall not become subjects, but fellow citizens. ... Look not, therefore, with jealously upon the hardy pioneers who scale our mountains and cultivate our unoccupied plains; but rather welcome them as brothers, who come to share with us a common destiny.'" (quoting Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, 90-1)

"The bidding [for prisoners unable to pay their fine] rarely went higher than three or four dollars for a week's work, at the conclusion of which the convict worker would be paid an additional dollar or two, often in the form of a bottle of aguardiente, ensuring another crop of prisoners for the subsequent week. 'Los Angeles had its slave mart, as well as New Orleans and Constantinople. ... Only a slave at Los Angeles was sold fifty-two times a year as long as he lived, which did not generally exceed one, two or three years, under the new dispensation.'" (quoting Horace Bell, 247)

"'Those who seek vengeance ... dote on the most insignificant of details.'" (quoting newspaper editor Francisco Ramirez, 367)

"Most rancheros successfully defended their claims before the Public Land Commission or in the courts, but few survived the drought. To pay taxes, service debts, and maintain their way of life, many took mortgages at usurious rates and later suffered foreclosure." (443)

"Violence in frontier Los Angeles was overdetermined. A legacy of colonial conquest; antagonistic relations among Indians, Californios, Mexicans, Anglos, and Chinese; conflicts over land and labor; large numbers of transient men; a thriving counterculture of vice and crime; a city awash in wine and aguardiente; and deadly weapons readily at hand -- all these factors contributed to the mayhem. ... Increased confidence in the possibility of official justice offers the best explanation for the decline in the level of lethal violence." (500-1)

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I give it two starts, and I stand by it -- but I also believe that this is likely one of those times that the rating tells you more about the reader than the book.

I couldn't get into it. The book's ratio was all backwards for me. What - wait? What the hell does that mean? What ratio? Well, in pretty much every history book, you want to have some stories. They help engage the reader, and flesh out the points. But in most quality history books (especially those written by scholars), the point is to go beyond merely telling tales. You also want to make a broader point about your topic. More than simply say WHAT happened, you want to explain WHY it happened. That's what I mean by ratio -- you need the stories to serve as hooks, and the broader points behind them. You need the sizzle and the steak. You got to balance them.

The typical problem in works by historians (such as Faragher) is they give all steak and no sizzle. They give you vitamins, but no taste. But this one makes the opposite mistake. There are so many stories that I had trouble finding the point. I mean, there are points in there, but Faragher gave us so many tales, that I had trouble finding the deeper point to any of it. Eventually, I went into skim/scan mode, more reading over it than reading it. That's never fun - and especially not when you have a 500+ page book in front of you.

The main issue is that frontier LA was a dangerous place. You had the Spanish settlements by Catholic clergy. There was clergy-Indian issues. Then secular Spanish vs clergy issues. Then Americans started showing up, and the Mexican-American War eventually happened. All these competing groups made it hard to establish any normal law & order, as one system of justice didn't have much credibility on the frontier. This was on top of the normal semi-lawful status of a frontier. Oh, and the Civil War played a role, too, as most LA settlers were pro-Confederate in a pro-Union state. There were plenty of killings and death and lynchings and extra-legal violence. It culminated in a mass lynching of Chinese led to a revulsion away from it.

If you're looking for a good read, this can be a good book for you.

[Neil Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially after this election season when people were waxing nostalgic over how great America was, it is a nice tonic to see how it was actually founded. This looks at the history of California, specifically around LA, and shows how it was "founded" and how the Justice system took its time in getting setup.

The first part of the book shows the political intrigue of how America saw a shiny object and decided to take it. I had never read the history of Cali around 1850, which is when the military marched through and declared California the United States and then setup a government.

The second half is all about the violence in this new US territory, which fed into frustration about the effectiveness of the Justice System, which led to lynching. Faragher quite skillfully takes the reader through a horror show by taking you through crimes as they happened and then to the finale of mobs coming into jails and hauling out alleged criminals to hang them in downtown LA. The examples start to bleed into each other a little bit until it builds up to a horrific climax in Chinatown, where a mob of Angelenos kill 18 people of Chinese decent, in what is still one of the worst racially violent acts in our country's history.

Overall, a very provocative history that I would recommend, especially for those of you living out in LA.

[Bookforum Magazine]

"The book's humanity is all in Faragher's exhumation of numberless peripheral lives long since consigned to oblivion: the battered wives who sometimes rebelled, the merchants who never knew when their hardscrabble incomes might be upended by mayhem, the adolescents who scrambled for a choice spot from which to view the latest hanging.

Considering how complicated and generally grim his material is, we're lucky that Faragher writes with admirable lucidity, a seemingly effortless command of all sorts of specialized knowledge, and–when it's apt–wit.

As you read, you may regret that There Will Be Blood was already taken, but Faragher's book is the ideal prequel to Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 epic about SoCal's formative years in the early twentieth century."

–Tom Carson on John Mack Faragher's Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles in the February/March 2016 issue of Bookforum

To read the rest of this review, go to Bookforum:
http://bookforum.com/?pn=inprint&...

[William Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has grown up around Los Angeles in the late 20th century, it is difficult to imagine a metropolis of 3.9 million people as a rowdy, riotous, rambunctious town of 4,000 people. Faragher brings that small town to life vividly in this excellent work on violence (of which there was plenty) and justice (of which there was very little) in 19th century Los Angeles. It was a pleasure to recall some history of my state that I haven't encountered since 3rd grade--and especially a lot of history that I haven't encountered before. For instance, Faragher goes into great detail about Los Angeles during the Mexican-American War, a lot of which tends to be ignored in favor of what was happening in Texas at that time.

I highly recommend this work for fellow Angelenos. It's very accessible and it'll give you a sense of a Los Angeles that, for the better, no longer exists.

[Tyna Orren · Rating 5 out of 5]

In mid-nineteenth century Los Angeles, what is now North Broadway Street was called Calle de Eternidad, or Eternity Street. Unlike North Broadway, Eternity Street didn’t continue northeastward across the Los Angeles River. It ended at a cemetery near today’s Chinatown. From about 1840 into the 1870s, traffic on Eternity Street was heavy with funeral processions for the victims of rampant violence and equally rampant frontier justice. That little-known period of Los Angeles history is the subject of Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, by John Mack Faragher, the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University and a Southern California native.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Los Angeles was hit by a perfect storm of social and cultural disintegration. In the eighteenth century, Catholic Spain had taken the indigenous peoples from their communities and enslaved them on the grounds of the Franciscan missions. Then, upon gaining independence in 1821, Mexico secularized the missions, displacing hundreds of Indians formerly attached to Mission San Gabriel and forcing them to seek work and sustenance in the Pueblo of Los Angeles. In the 1830s, the modicum of order that independent Mexico had succeeded in imposing on Alta California was under pressure from disaffected Californios and from expansionist elements from the United States. Through a sequence of masterfully told stories, Faragher traces the slow creation of an ordered society of laws out of the lawlessness that arose in the wake of these events.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Los Angeles’s murder rate was frightening. The county’s population grew from 3,500 in 1850 to 15,000 in 1870. In the City of Los Angeles, there were 10 to 35 murders each year between 1850 and 1875. In 1855, Los Angeles counted more murders than San Francisco, which had 10 times the population. As Faragher recounts, “Los Angeles was one of the most lethal places on the planet, with a murder rate comparable to that of Mexican border towns in the first decade of the twenty-first century, at the height of the violence between warring drug cartels.” Yet the murder statistics understated the true level of violence. Killings labeled murders excluded most killings committed in “self-defense.” As Faragher notes, gunfights were constant in a town “awash in guns.”

The courts themselves were not free of violence. Lawyers and judges were known to carry guns and Bowie knives into the courtroom. During a hearing in 1860, District Attorney E.J.C. Kewen fired a gun at defense counsel, hitting a bystander. In 1877, attorney and former judge Robert Widney pointed a gun at a witness and called him a “perjured villain” after the witness testified that Widney had participated in an infamous vigilante hanging.

In fact, Widney was a vigilante—one of several responsible, public-minded citizens who participated in or supported frontier Los Angeles’s vigilance committees. During this period, vigilante groups were highly active in Los Angeles. Of the 300 vigilante executions recorded in California between 1836 and 1876, 50 occurred in Los Angeles. Vigilantism arose from a public perception that official institutions of justice were failing to stem violence and administer “proper” justice. Over the century, Los Angeles’s vigilante groups grew in numbers and power to a point where vigilante lynchings were themselves the most horrific expressions of the violence that the committees had been formed to prevent.

Los Angeles’s first recorded vigilante hanging occurred in 1836, under Mexican rule. José Domingo Féliz was found dead. His wife and her lover confessed to the killing, and there was an outcry for “speedy and solemn justice.” A “people’s committee” presented the town council with a petition asserting that official institutions were ineffectual in curbing violence. The committee declared María Féliz and Gervasio Alipás guilty of murder and demanded that the couple be turned over to the people for execution. The council “chose not to wage a lonely struggle against a people angry and armed.” The lovers were taken from the jail and hanged.

By 1851, a year into California statehood, and for at least another 20 years, Los Angeles’s institutions of justice were no more effectual than in 1836. The city’s common council rejected an early proposal to prohibit guns within city limits and repeatedly rejected proposals to fund an adequate police force. From the founding of the county in 1850 to 1869, law enforcement consisted of the county sheriff, his undersheriff and deputy, plus the city marshal and two deputies. These officers were responsible for keeping the peace in an area comprising present-day Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Orange counties. In addition, the sheriff was responsible for collecting county taxes—out of which he took a share. By 1870, the addition of four deputy marshals brought the number of law enforcement officials in Los Angeles to 10 for a population of 15,000. In this vacuum of public authority, 10 murders were recorded in 1850 and 12 in 1851, but an editorial in the Star asked, “Who today can name one instance in which a murderer has been punished?”

Los Angeles’s first legitimate, legal execution did not happen until February 1854, and it was tainted by apparent racism and unfairness. The defendant, Ygnacio Herrera, killed the victim in a brawl—the kind of killing that in previous years most likely would not have been prosecuted. Herrera’s actions were arguably less blameworthy than two widely publicized killings early in 1853. Those killings, committed by two Anglos, had been ruled justifiable by the Anglo judge who presided at their preliminary hearing. The evidently differing standards used in the two cases led non-Anglo Californios to suspect discrimination. Still, Herrera’s trial, conviction, and lawful execution were a start toward fair, regular criminal procedures in Los Angeles and a corresponding end of vigilantism.

The event that most decisively turned Angelenos away from vigilantism took place on October 23, 1871, when 18 Chinese immigrants were tortured and hanged by a mob. The trouble began when a city patrolman heard gunfire, rode to the scene, found a chaotic situation, and sought help from bystanders in making arrests. The gunfighters escaped, but over the next several hours, the officers lost control and a mob reaching 600 surrounded a building in which several dozen innocent Chinese men and women were hiding. Eighteen men were dragged outside, beaten, shot, and hanged at locations around town.

Attorney Robert Widney and other “old vigilantes” teamed up with longtime opponents of vigilantism, confronted the mob, and ended the horror. It was widely recognized, though, that “the monstrosity of the thing was in imitation of the Vigilance Committee, in hanging those arrested…instead of allowing the law to take its own course.” In an evident gesture toward exonerating the vigilantes for the violence of October 23, or toward making amends for their actions over the preceding half-century, Robert Widney sought appointment as judge in the proceedings against the lynchers, and he was appointed.

Only eight lynchers were convicted, and those convictions were of mere manslaughter. As to at least one victim, even that judgment was reversed by the California Supreme Court on the ground that the indictment failed to expressly allege that the victim was killed. In sum, the proceedings fell short of a dramatic triumph of justice over violence. Afterwards however, nothing was the same.

Los Angeles’s last vigilante hanging was in 1874. Jesús Romo was identified as the perpetrator of a horrific robbery and assault, and within hours was hanged near the scene of the crime by a group that included “some of the worthiest and most respected citizens of Los Angeles County.” After that, Los Angeles continued to be violent, exceeding the national murder rate by half until the end of the century. But the reign of vigilantism was over—a palpable step forward.

Although primarily an account of a victory of ordered justice over vengeance, Eternity Street offers more. The book recounts some of the rich history of Los Californios that preceded statehood, and it provides background on the Anglo-American conquest of California that most Californians are not taught in school. For lawyers, the book provides context and history to the formation of Los Angeles’s political and legal institutions. For all Angelenos and readers of history, the book provides insight into the soul of the City of Angels that will enrich our understanding of who we are as a community.

[Virginia Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Los Angeles was a rough and ready place during the decades between 1850 and 1880. This book recounts the many mortal skirmishes between the ethnic groups living here then -- the Californios, Mexicans, Anglos, and Indians -- as well as the lynchings and killings of a more personal nature, with money, land, or a woman as the stimulus. This is a well-documented historical account, but the accounts tend to blur after reading about yet another violent encounter.

[Nicole Langley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed starting this book but decided not to finish it at this time. The concept is still fascinating.

[Philip Weverka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive history of war and violence in Southern California from 1840-1870.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at rough frontier justice in early LA, though tended to become sort of a litany of similar-sounding appalling incidents after a while.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In summary, Los Angeles has never given a flying fuck about your god damn laws.

[Scott Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's open with: this is a fantastic book on the colonial and early modern history of California, with a focus on the Los Angeles area (but really - this could be the only book on CA history you read, and you'd get a pretty solid understanding of it for most of the state). This is a very complete book, full of deeply-researched information. Maybe TOO complete? The downside: because of that incredibly detailed history, it's...much less about violence and justice in Los Angeles.

The breadth of subjects and the detail in which they're covered clearly shows the unbelievable amount of primary research the author performed. Legitimately amazing, this will be the go-to book to students of early los Angeles history for decades. But it also shows how hard a time someone (author? editor?) had separating the information that supported the theme of the book from...well, every detail of what everybody had for breakfast. The book reads like a classic example of someone unable to kil, their babies, or exile extraneous information to endnotes. It just needs a heavier hand on the editing wheel, or actually - it really should be split into two books, one on violence in Los Angeles and one on colonial California history. The "eternity" referred to in the title is how long it feels like to get through the book.

[Adrian]

An absorbing history of early LA. Describes how Mexicans overwhelmed Indios and then how Americans defeated Mexicans to make California part of the US. When county government was established in LA a police force was not part of the equation. Crime and violence was handled by vigilance committees. It is on the justice dispensed by these committees between 1850 and the early 1870s that most of this book is centered on. The violence is astonishing. Much of it of a domestic nature, husband on wife but it also pitted Anglos against Latinos (or Californios as the author calls them). Spanish speakers got the thin end of the stick. Faragher's explanation for this is that southern California culture was heavily influenced by settlers many of whom came from Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and other southern states. The origins of Chinatown are also explored and the enormous racism that saw 18 Chinese hanged by vigilantism. It was the trial for this crime in 1872 which began to break the hold these committees had on public attitudes. This book was bought at the Richard Riordan Central Library bookstore.

[Glen Chern · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Mack Faragher has written the best book that I have ever read! I had trouble putting this book down each night as I read. I was inspired to read this book because I was born in Los Angeles and I wanted to know more about the history of the area. The author shares so many incredible and fascinating stories about the people and the events.

It is very obvious that the research that the author put into this volume was truly an epic responsibility and task. I can’t put my finger on anyone particular story that the author relates. Besides the stories, the accompanying photos at the end were pretty much what I anticipated, especially those of the men.

Any one has any interest in the history of one of America’s most prestigious cities should definitely read “Eternity Street”!

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frontier violence is often glorified. Not in this book. The sordid history of LA’s violent 19th century reads almost like a novel.

Despite the focus on Los Angeles, this book is really about America and its violent history. One of the more interesting insights from reading this book is what a dominant role Southern men played in 19th century LA. They brought their racist violence west and dominated LA culture and politics.

This is a fantastic book for anyone interested in the history of America. Not just LA. America.

[Lukas Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating and exceptionally well-researched history that ultimately gets bogged down by too much minutia. In my very humble opinion!

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough recounting of many violent episodes in the history of frontier Los Angeles. Drives home the realization that the villainy in Western fiction is no exaggeration.

[Bert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally finished this exhaustively researched behemoth. Very interesting in parts. Drags in others. The scholarship is apparent but some editing is in order.

[Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best history books I’ve read. Incredible research that benefits from Farragher’s wonderful writing. One for the bookshelf of any Angeleno.

[Nancy Nigrosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting. Doesn’t live up to its potential.