Growing up in a somewhat nearby suburb, around ten miles from downtown (which is roughly the same distance away to the east as Sepulveda Blvd is to the West), I have memories of suburbs surrounded by agriculture/agribusiness. Some people still raised chickens and sold eggs to the local ranch market through most of the 70's. Go back to the 60's, and the area was dominated by dairy cows (and drive through dairys selling that milk).

There are still strawberry fields where the 60 and 605 meet, and migrant workers still pick them, and people still buy them from the berry stands when they can. Up the street, they just opened a Fry's, and down the freeway a bit, is the virtual airstrip for computer parts arriving from Taiwan into Los Angeles. (Incidentally, the cows were moved out there in the 70's. Again, in the 80's, they were moved to the Inland Empire.)

The first residents in these areas were often the people working on the local ranches, so they understood farming and growing food. A lot of them were also farmers in the area. Gardening was common and popular, and something of a prerequisite for participating in the suburban lifestyle of comparing gardens and trading fruits.

The current thing in Rosemead is the (notorious) Vietnamese vegetable garden. Notorious because they garden in front of the house, not in back, and because the vegetables are not decorative, but for eating. Lettuce and chiles. They recall the old-style houses in the area that were somewhat decrepit by the 70's, but sported a milpa, or cornfield, in front or on the side. These vestiges of suburban peasant agriculture seemed to disappear with the land boom of the 80's, and the urbanization/gentrification of eastside suburbia. Newly affluent people with agricultural memories have taken over these houses and added micro-farms.

In the other valley, up near Reseda, there's a dying population of orange and lemon trees, a symbolic nod to the orchards that covered the San Fernando Valley, before the military industrial complex made the area its home in the 50's.

On Sawtelle, there's still vestiges of the Japanese farming community. The big nurseries are still operating, and I guess people are still buying. Believe it or not, there were still Japanese farms in Hollywood in the 50's (count the number of old flower shops in the area). In the 50's there were farms in Culver City, Venice, Santa Ana, Monterey Park, San Gabriel, Van Nuys, Whittier, Mar Vista, Montebello, Torrance, Carson, Compton, etc.

Many of the first settlers in the suburbs were farm laborers and migrant workers.

In LA County, if you see a house on a flat property, that house was probably the first house ever on that property. Figure out its vintage, and you'll have figured out when the area was last a ranch, or a farm, or a huge vacant lot.

Along the San Gabriel River, in El Monte, I saw a rodeo. It was in Spanish, and the sponsor was Power 106.