Los Angeles

34.0522°N, 118.2437°W.

Largest city in California, founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles by Spanish colonists in 1781 with 44 settlers. The city now spans 1,302 km² across mountains, coastline, and basin, including 75 distinct districts. The Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed 1913 by William Mulholland, transports water 375 km from the Owens Valley to the city, falling 1,170 metres along the way and generating hydroelectric power; its construction emptied Owens Lake (a 280-km² body of water) into a dust-storm-producing dry bed within 13 years. The Hollywood Sign (1923) was originally a 14-metre-tall real-estate advertisement for a housing development called Hollywoodland. La Brea Tar Pits, in central LA, have produced over 3.5 million Pleistocene fossils since 1901 — the densest concentration of Ice Age fossils in the world, still bubbling tar in a city park.

A 14-metre real-estate sign became a global brand, and Pleistocene mammoths are still being pulled out of the tar in the middle of the city.