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Eagle Rock is the site of Occidental College, which relocated there after a fire destroyed its original campus in Highland Park.
Prior to the arrival of white settlers, the secluded valley in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains that is roughly congruent to Eagle Rock's present boundaries was inhabited by the Tongva tribe, who hunted the game that watered at its springs. These aboriginal inhabitants were displaced by Spanish settlers in the late 18th century, with the area incorporated into the Rancho San Rafael. The arrival of American settlers and the growth of Los Angeles resulted in steadily increasing semi-rural development in the region throughout the late 19th century, culminating in Eagle Rock's incorporation as an independent city in 1906. However, the arrival of Owens Valley water via the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the concurrent depletion of the young city's wells ultimately led the city fathers to agree to annexation by Los Angeles in 1923.
In the 1940s and 1950s, construction of the Arroyo Seco Parkway (now Pasadena Freeway), the Ventura Freeway, and a large landfill severely reduced the neighborhood's desirability, and it gradually became a low-income Latino community. The Southern California real estate boom of the early 2000s, however, has made Eagle Rock--with its natural beauty, relatively central location, and high-quality public schools--a hot neighborhood for young professionals seeking alternatives to the suburbs and the West SideWest Los Angeles also called the West Side is generally considered to be the portion of Los Angeles, California and its suburbs that lies east of the Pacific Ocean, west of Fairfax Avenue (varying definitions place the eastern boundary a half-mile west, a.
Los Angeles neighborhoods