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.
L.A.'s clashing street grids and the errant boulevards that defy them represent a palimpsest of past political and cultural influences on the Los Angeles cityscape.
From the 1850s through the early 1900s, the area now known as Chinatown was home to L.A.'s first barrio.
Santa Monica might today be crawling with semi-trailer trucks, cranes, and container ships had a late-19th-century political dispute ended differently.
Showcasing Southern California's comfortable climes was one of the goals of the Rose Parade's founders.
Downtown L.A.'s Second and Third Street tunnels star in countless action movies and car commercials, but other tunnels--now lost to history--served as landmarks for decades.
Pasadena's Tournament of Roses was a 19th-century invention of the exclusive Valley Hunt Club.
L.A. can hardly be called a winter wonderland, but Southern Californians have long found their own ways to celebrate the holidays, from candy-cane paint jobs on streetcars to postcards extolling the region's suitability for citriculture.
It's been nearly 70 years since the last recorded military attack on a Southern California land target. While conventional warfare in L.A.'s vicinity is an unlikely prospect today, in historical times war did occasionally mar the region's landscape.
Despite the diversity and ubiquity of palms in the Los Angeles area, only one species, Washingtonia filifera, is native to California. How then did the palm tree come to represent Southern California in the popular imagination?
West Hollywood was founded in 1896 as the town of Sherman, a settlement for workers on L.A.'s trolley system.
The Mayflower may have landed on the opposite coast, but Southern Californians have long marked the fourth Thursday in November with a Thanksgiving feast.
Exposition Park is known today for football games, dinosaur exhibits, and its sunken rose garden. But as its original name--Agricultural Park--suggests, the park's history reveals a time when farming in Los Angeles was not limited to rooftop skid row g...