Strolling down Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park,...

By MONICA VALENCIA

Jan. 31, 1997 12 AM PT

Strolling down Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park, one can see long-established retail stores such as Woolworth’s and JCPenney. But also prominent are scores of independent businesses that have made the street one of the most popular Latino marketplaces in Southern California.

A five-block stretch is filled with a variety of clothing outlets, restaurants, barbershops and produce markets, which draw shoppers from as far as Northridge and Santa Ana.

But early developers had no plans to make Huntington Park a home for residents and small businesses.

The area remained largely undeveloped until the latter part of the 19th century. In 1899, two land promoters, A.L. Burbank and E.V. Baker, enticed newly arrived buggy-loads of land buyers into purchasing lots priced from $75 to $350. By 1901 they controlled a 100-acre tract south of Randolph Street that they called La Park.

When Henry Huntington extended his railroad line through the area, La Park became Huntington Park. Burbank and Baker envisioned Huntington Park as strictly a commercial center for the transport of produce and goods.

It wasn’t until a group of more farseeing residents developed the area that the city began to take shape. They built the first bank, schoolhouse and large townhouse. The first post office, at Randolph and Pacific, included a cracker box at the end of a counter where residents could sift through the contents for their mail. In 1906, Huntington Park officially became a city.

Pacific Boulevard became a prime shopping area for southeast Los Angeles County in the mid-1930s but fell into decline in the early 1960s.

Mayor Tom Jackson, who has served on the City Council for 29 years and has been Huntington Park’s mayor 10 times, recalled the city’s changing times.

“Indoor, air-conditioned malls drew customers away from Huntington Park,” said Jackson, who has owned a flower shop in the city since 1970.

“Most of the majority white, middle-class population moved into distant suburbs,” he said. “In the late ‘70s more Hispanics began moving into the area and revived the shopping district.”

The city’s population jumped from 33,400 in 1970 to 46,000 in 1980. Latino residents constituted 81% of the Huntington Park population in 1980, compared with 36% in 1970.

Today the population of the city, located about five miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, is about 56,000, of whom about 92% are Latino.

Aiming to strengthen the city’s identity, city officials are developing a business improvement district. They are also creating a plan to clear a mound of concrete debris, declared a public nuisance in December, from a neighborhood.

Huntington Park residents take pride in its image as a low-key, family-oriented community. “People live, work, shop and send their children to school all in one city,” Jackson said.

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By the Numbers

CITY BUSINESS

Incorporated: September 1, 1906

Square miles: 3

Number of city parks: 4

City employees: 173 fulltime; 37 part time

1996-97 operating budget: 14 million (capital & restricted funds excluded)

ETHNIC Breakdown

Latino: 92%

White: 5%

Asian: 1%