Wonder of the West

A sepia Los Angeles carnival image reveals an early 20th-century settlement on the brink of metamorphosis into a cityscape. Country store nostalgia still takes center stage, but encroaching urbanization and ubiquitous utility poles announce the advent of a burgeoning metropolis.

The journey from California’s early mining era to the state’s dramatic urban and suburban explosion occurred within just three generations. California exuberantly exercised its increasing clout on the national political scene and emerged as a dynamic global economic power. Building on the success of its first 10 years, The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) continues to document the myriad aspects of that compelling journey through its richly fertile collaboration between USC faculty and students and the historical archives and curatorial expertise at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. By utilizing its archival sources to weave our histories, the ICW apprentices young scholars, transforming them into the nation’s leaders in furthering our collective understanding of how the history of California and the American West shapes the present, and, in turn, all of our futures. 

While Southern California Edison’s photographers recorded power generation and distribution, from monumental dams to tall transmission lines, they also illustrated electricity’s myriad uses, from bold neon advertisements and signage, to the domestic comfort and convenience of the gleaming modern home.

Providing a unique opportunity to explore the birth of a modern metropolis, the innovative 2013 digital exhibition Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940 – 1990 was an ICW project and part of  Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A., an initiative of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Artists, authors,  critics and scholars were invited each to curate an exhibit on a chosen theme using photographs drawn from The Huntington’s Southern California Edison archive. ICW Director William Deverell, professor and chair of history, described the 70,000-image archive as a “historical gold mine.” The exhibition was organized by Deverell and history scholar Greg Hise.

Southern California’s historical trajectory has been shaped and transformed by its dynamic aerospace industry. This phenomenon attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention, however, until the ICW launched the Aerospace History Project in 2006. Directed by award-winning science historian Peter Westwick, assistant professor (research) of history, this multi-faceted research, curatorial, pedagogical and publishing effort is dedicated to creating an archive of documents, photographs and oral histories of key institutions and personalities. It traces the remarkable velocity of the region’s aerospace revolution, from post-Civil War ballooning that inspired early aviation technology, to the Southern California aerospace industry’s role in winning World War II and the Cold War, to its jet engine ambitions and beyond to the next frontier — space travel.