Palmdale, California
Palmdale, California
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2290806

Palmdale, California

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2290806

Palmdale, California

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Palmdale, California

Palmdale is a city in northern Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city lies in the Antelope Valley of Southern California. The San Gabriel Mountains separate Palmdale from the Los Angeles Basin to the south.

On August 24, 1962, Palmdale became the first city in Antelope Valley. Forty-seven years later, in November 2009, voters approved making it a charter city. Palmdale's population was 169,450 at the 2020 census, up from 152,750 at the 2010 census. Palmdale is the 33rd most populous city in California. Together with its immediate northern neighbor, the city of Lancaster, the Palmdale–Lancaster urban area had a population of 359,559 in 2020.

Palmdale was first inhabited by various tribal pre-Americans. Populated by different groups for an estimated 11,000 years, the Antelope Valley was a trade route for nomadic pre-Americans traveling from what is now Arizona and New Mexico to California's coast. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Palmdale area had been occupied by the Kitanemuk. The Yokuts, Chumash people and Shoshone may have also been present in the area.

Spanish soldier Captain Pedro Fages explored the Antelope Valley in 1772. The opening of California to overland travel through the forbearing desert was due to Captain Juan Bautista de Anza and Father Francisco Garces, a Spanish priest. They led a colonizing expedition, which included 136 settlers, across the Mojave Desert from Mexico to Monterey in 1773.

Later in 1776 while exploring the Valley, Garces, with several Indian guides from the San Gabriel Mission, recorded viewing the vast expanse of what was the El Tejon Rancheria (the Badger Ranch) of the Cuabajoy Indians. After the Shoshone Indians left the valley, new immigrants from Spain and Mexico established large cattle ranches there. In the late 1880s, the ranches were divided into smaller homesteads and farmed by settlers from Germany, France and the state of Nebraska.

"Palmenthal", the first permanent settlement within the limits of Palmdale, was established as a village on April 20, 1886, by westward Lutheran travelers from the American Midwest, mostly of German and Swiss descent. According to area folklore, the travelers had been told they would know they were close to the ocean when they saw palm trees. They took the local Joshua trees for palms and named their settlement after them. (Palmenthal is German for Palm Valley.) According to David L. Durham, Joshua trees were sometimes called yucca palms at the time, which was the reason for the name. The village was officially established upon the arrival of a post office on June 17, 1888.

By the 1890s (soon after the last of the indigenous antelopes, which the valley was named after, had been hunted to extinction), farming families continued to migrate to Palmenthal and nearby Harold to grow grain and fruit. Most of these settlers were unfamiliar with farming in a desert climate, so when the drought years occurred, most abandoned their settlement.

By 1899, only one family was left in the original village. The rest of the settlers, along with the post office, moved closer to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. This new community was renamed Palmdale and was located where the present-day civic center is. A railroad station was built along the tracks there. This railroad was operated by Southern Pacific and traveled between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Wells Fargo stagecoach line that ran between San Francisco and New Orleans stopped there as well.

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