Mexican Los Angeles History in Interactive Maps.

This one-day lesson guides students to investigate Mexican connections to and ownership of land in present-day Los Angeles before and after California became part of the United States. Students examine historical documents, primary sources, and an interactive map to trace changes in land ownership, use, boundaries, and control over time. Students consider how political and legal power shaped relationships to land in present-day Los Angeles, and how historical records influence what is remembered and what can be claimed. Students begin by examining a nineteenth-century diseño of Rancho La Cienega o Paso de la Tijera, a hand-drawn map showing the approximate boundaries and geographic features of a Mexican land grant received by Vicente Sánchez in 1843 under Mexican law.

The lesson provides historical context about the Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. periods of California history and introduces the political transition that followed the U.S. acquisition of present-day California. Students then independently explore the Picturing Mexican America interactive map using historical documents connected to locations across present-day Los Angeles.

• Slide Deck on Historical Context: Mexican land grants and the transition from Mexican to U.S. rule of Western regions (1821-1848, with optional extensions before Spanish rule and into present-day).

• Primary Source: Diseño of Rancho La Cienega o Paso de la Tijera, c. 1844 — a hand-drawn map used to show the approximate boundaries and important features of a Mexican land grant.

• Picturing Mexican America Interactive Map for students to investigate Mexican land ownership across 19th-century Los Angeles — from “Picturing Mexican America,” a digital humanities project designed and run by UCLA Professor of English and Chicana/o and Central American Studies, Dr. Marissa López, in collaboration with the LA Public Library.

• Student Handout, including Close Reading and Spatial Analysis Questions; Complex Thinking Prompts; and Evidence-Based Reflection.

• Extended Enrichment — Optional Extension Activities.

How did land ownership change after California became part of the United States, and what does the history of legal and political transition of land ownership in Los Angeles reveal about the continuity and changes in peoples’ relationship to a land?

1. Whose presence or relationship to land is remembered or made invisible under different historical circumstances?

2. What does it mean to “claim” land? Do people have power over land?

3. What does it require to recover local history, and how might doing so change the way we understand land rights, cultural, political, or social belonging, national memory, and historical evidence?

4. How does change over time affect people's relationships to a place?

5. How might learning the Mexican history of Los Angeles change the way we understand who belongs in the city today?