Vernon, California

Vernon is a city five miles (8.0 km) south of downtown Los Angeles, California, the nearest separate city to downtown Los Angeles. The population was 112 at the 2010 United States census, the least of any incorporated city in the state. Its population nearly doubled to 222 by the 2020 census, making it the second least populous city in the state, after Amador City.

The city is primarily composed of industrial areas and touts itself as "exclusively industrial". Meatpacking plants and warehouses are common. As of 2006, there were no parks in the city.

Vernon is the site of the Battle of La Mesa on January 9, 1847, when General Stephen W. Kearny again defeated General José María Flores the day after the Battle of Río San Gabriel. Accepting defeat, General Flores fled southeast to Sonora, while Major Pico headed north into the San Gabriel Mountains with a hundred Californios. This ended hostilities in Alta California during the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848. By the dawn of the 20th century, it was a stretch of unincorporated grassland near Los Angeles' flourishing downtown.

In 1905, Vernon was incorporated by ranchers James J. and Thomas J. Furlong and John B. Leonis, a merchant. Vernon was incorporated to promote industrial development along the railroads in the area. John Leonis, of Basque origin, had come to Southern California in 1880 to work for his uncle, Miguel Leonis, and later established his own ranch on unincorporated county land southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Recognizing the importance of the three major railroads running through the area, he persuaded railroad executives to run spur tracks off the main lines and incorporated the adjacent three miles (4.8 km) as the first "exclusively industrial" city in the southwestern United States. He named the new city after a dirt road, Vernon Avenue, that crossed its center.

In 1907, on land leased from Leonis, the founders of the city marketed Vernon as a "sporting town". The Vernon Arena was known for its 20-round boxing matches. Shortly thereafter, the Pacific Coast League built a baseball park. The Vernon Tigers, a minor league baseball team in the Pacific Coast League, played from 1909 through 1925. The team won back-to-back PCL pennants in 1919 and 1920. The ballpark also housed two 1910 Southern California Trolley League teams, the Los Angeles Maiers and the Los Angeles McCormicks.

Leonis created an enticing attraction, leasing property to the founders of the city, for a baseball stadium, a 7,000-seat boxing arena, and the "world's longest bar", 100 feet long with thirty-seven bartenders. The Vernon Country Club was a popular night spot for young Hollywood for a time, especially during a brief window before national prohibition was instituted where Los Angeles was "dry" but Vernon still permitted the sale of alcohol. As industrialists from the East Coast traveled to Vernon for heavyweight matches, Leonis sold many of them on locating their West Coast factories in Vernon. By the 1930s, Owens-Illinois and Alcoa had facilities there, purchasing subsidized electricity from the new utility Vernon Light & Power.

While some land adjacent to the original incorporated area was excluded from the city in 1910 and 1924, land to the east and south was incorporated in 1914, 1920, 1925, 1926 and 1928. The most important of these was that of 1925, when almost 800 acres of the Central Manufacturing District, which was already built up with 28 industrial plants, adding an assessed valuation of $8 million to the city's resources. This annexation was voted up unanimously by Mr & Mrs A. J. Olsen, of 4318 S. Downey Road, the only two legal voters in the district. Such selective annexations ensured industrial areas were brought within the city, while residential areas were excluded.

The Studebaker factory was built in 1938 at 4530 Loma Vista Avenue. It was the company's only West Coast factory, producing 64 cars a day. It was closed in 1956, and ten years later in 1966, Studebaker folded.