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.
The train tunnel in this 1898 film is now where Interstate 10 turns into Pacific Coast Highway.
On Dec. 31, 1897, a photographer for the Edison Manufacturing Company captured a lively downtown scene on Spring Street.
When the ramp opened sometime around 1905, it was the first automobile shortcut over the cliffs separating Santa Monica from its beach.
They had little practical knowledge of farming, but that didn't stop these idealistic colonists from trying to live off the land.
Built between 1929 and 1956, the Angeles Crest Highway forever changed the once-remote mountain backcountry it traverses.
Los Angeles was a town under military rule when gunfire greeted the rising sun on the Fourth of July, 1847.
William Mulholland began flooding the meadowlands of Ivanhoe Canyon in November 1907.
Long before Technicolor or Kodachrome, audiences gathered in darkened spaces and saw Los Angeles in vibrant, even surreal, color.
In 1908, journalist Charles Fletcher Lummis campaigned against the many ways English tongues were butchering the Spanish name.
Built from 1950-60, Interstate 5 lured aerospace firms, millions of residents, and a Magic Kingdom to once-rural Orange County.
Los Angeles officially became the territorial capital of Alta California in 1835.
Not everyone in Hollywood wanted the 101 freeway when construction began in 1947. One group even denounced it as "un-American."