The Man Who Sold America

Chapter Eighteen

Selling and Unselling California

From 1900 to 1920, Los Angeles was essentially a tourist town. Like most tourist towns, it had its share of freaks, side-shows, novelties, and show-places. Ducks waddled along the streets with advertisements painted on their backs; six-foot-nine pituitary giants with sandwich-board signs stalked the downtown streets; while thousands of people carrying Bibles in their hands and singing hymns marched in evangelical parades . . . During the winter months, Los Angeles was, in fact, a great circus without a tent.¹

—Cary McWilliams

BY 1920, tourism was bringing some 200,000 visitors a year to Southern ...