Nathan Masters
Nathan Masters is host and executive producer of Lost L.A., an Emmy Award-winning public television series from KCET and the USC Libraries. The show explores how rare artifacts from Southern California's archives can unlock hidden and often-surprising stories from the region's past. Nathan’s writing has appeared in many publications, including Los Angeles Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. He also helps manage public programs and media initiatives at the USC Libraries, home to the L.A. as Subjectresearch consortium.
In 1786, a sergeant in the Spanish army sketched what was likely the first map of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles sketched by William Rich Hutton in July 1847 is virtually unrecognizable today.
Its origin story is something of a mystery. Who took the photo, and when?
Once the site of a two-story Victorian house and the original Vons grocery store, the intersection of Figueroa and 7th will soon host the tallest building on the West Coast.
From Anaheim to Catalina Island, Southern California once hosted major-league baseball teams' preseason training camps.
Early photographs of Los Angeles surprise for many reasons, but often what's most striking is how empty the city looks.
Native to Southern California, the oak tree has been a powerful force in shaping the region's human history.
"Never Built: Los Angeles" presents an alternate history -- and an alternate present -- for a place where inspirational solutions to the city's problems have often been downscaled, defeated, or altogether forgotten.
These train depots, long since vanished, provided tourists' and emigrants' first introduction to Los Angeles, helping shape their ideas about the city.
With "Gangster Squad," the world's attention turns to the criminal underworld of postwar L.A. and its pugilistic boss, Mickey Cohen.
Mission bells along Highway 101 imply that motorists' tires trace the same path as missionaries' sandals. But much of El Camino Real's story is imagined.