Until 1848 The area was first inhabited by the Fernandeño-Tongva and Tataviam people, California Indian Tribes, now known as Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. The original name for the Native American village in this area was actually
Pakoinga or
Pakɨynga in Fernandeño, but since the "ng" sound (a
voiced velar nasal) did not exist in Spanish, the Spaniards mistook the sound as an "m" and recorded the name as
Pacoima, as is seen today. Pacoima's written history dates to 1769 when Spaniards entered the San Fernando Valley. In 1771, nearby
Mission San Fernando Rey was founded, with Native Americans creating gardens for the mission in the area. They lived at the mission working on the gardens which, in a few years, had stretched out over most of the valley. The Mexican government secularized the mission lands in 1834 by taking them away from the church. The first governor of California,
Pio Pico, leased the lands to
Andrés Pico, his brother. In 1845, Pio Pico sold the whole San Fernando Valley to Don Eulogio de Celis for $14,000 to raise money for the war between Mexico and the United States, settled by a treaty signed at Campo de Cahuenga in 1845, and by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The Pacoima area became sheep ranches and wheat fields. The town was built in keeping with the new Southern Pacific railroad station. Shortly after the rail line had been established, the
Southern Pacific Railroad chose the site for a large brick passenger station, which was considered to be one of the finest on their line. Soon large spacious and expensive two-story homes made their appearance, as the early planners had established building restrictions against anything of a lesser nature. The first concrete sidewalks and curbs were laid and were to remain the only ones in the San Fernando Valley for many years.
1940s: World War II During World War II, the rapid expansion of the workforce at
Lockheed's main plant in neighboring
Burbank and need for worker housing led to the construction of the
San Fernando Gardens housing project. By the 1950s, the rapid
suburbanization of the San Fernando Valley arrived in Pacoima, and the area changed almost overnight from a dusty farming area to a bedroom community for the fast-growing industries in Los Angeles and nearby Burbank and
Glendale, with transportation to and from Pacoima made easy by the
Golden State Freeway. Beginning in the late 1940s, parts of Pacoima started becoming a place where
Southern Californians escaping poverty in rural areas settled. In the post–World War II era, many
African Americans settled in Pacoima after arriving in the area during the second wave of the
Great Migration since they had been excluded from other neighborhoods due to racially discriminatory covenants. By 1960, almost all of the 10,000 African Americans in the
San Fernando Valley lived in Pacoima and
Arleta as it became the center of African-American life in the Valley. By February 1, seven people had died, and about 75 had been injured due to the incident. A 12-year-old boy died from multiple injuries from the incident on February 2. On June 10, 1957, a light aircraft hit a house in Pacoima; the four passengers on board died, and eight people in the house sustained injuries.
1960s to present In 1966, Los Angeles city planners wrote a 48-page report noting that Pacoima does not have a coherent structure to develop businesses in the
central business district, lacks civic pride, and has poor house maintenance. By the late 1960s, immigrants from rural Mexico began to move to Pacoima due to the low housing costs and the neighborhood's proximity to manufacturing jobs. African Americans who were better established began to move out and, in an example of
ethnic succession, within less than two decades, the African American population was replaced by a poorer Latino immigrant population. Immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador settled in Pacoima. ==Geography==