Huntington Park, California
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Huntington Park is a city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 61,348.
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History
Named for prominent industrialist Henry Huntington, Huntington Park was incorporated in 1906 as a streetcar suburb for workers in the rapidly expanding industries to the southeast of downtown Los Angeles. (To this day, about 30% of its residents work at factories in nearby Vernon and Commerce. [1] (http://factfinder.census.gov/)) The stretch of Pacific Avenue in downtown Huntington Park was a major commercial district serving the city's largely working-class residents, as well as those of neighboring cities such as Bell, Cudahy, and South Gate. As with most of the other cities along the corridor stretching along the Los Angeles River to the south and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Huntington Park was an almost exclusively white community well into the 1980s; Alameda Street and Slauson Avenue, which were fiercely defended segregation lines in the 1950s, separated it from black areas.
The changes that shaped Los Angeles from the late 1970s onward--the decline of American manufacturing that began in the 1970s; the rapid growth of newer suburbs in Orange County and the eastern San Gabriel and western San Fernando valleys; the collapse of the aerospace and defense industry at the end of the Cold War; and the implosion of the Southern California real estate boom in the early 1990s--resulted in the wholesale departure of virtually all of the white population of Huntington Park by the mid-1990s. The vacuum was filled almost entirely by two groups of Latinos: upwardly mobile families eager to leave the barrios of East Los Angeles, and recent Mexican immigrants (mostly undocumented) displaced by rapid economic changes in their homeland. Today, Pacific Avenue is once again a thriving commercial strip, serving once again as a major retail center for working-class residents of southeastern Los Angeles County--but unlike its previous heyday of the 1930s, the signs along the avenue's storefronts are virtually all in Spanish.
Geography
Huntington Park is located at 33°58'57" North, 118°13'3" West (33.982364, -118.217381)Template:GR.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 7.8 km² (3.0 mi²). 7.8 km² (3.0 mi²) of it is land and none of it is covered by water.
Demographics
As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2000, there are 61,348 people, 14,860 households, and 12,660 families residing in the city. The population density is 7,817.4/km² (20,252.4/mi²). There are 15,335 housing units at an average density of 1,954.1/km² (5,062.4/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 41.42% White, 0.78% Black or African American, 1.01% Native American, 0.80% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 51.07% from other races, and 4.86% from two or more races. 95.58% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 14,860 households out of which 58.3% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.4% are married couples living together, 20.3% have a female householder with no husband present, and 14.8% are non-families. 10.9% of all households are made up of individuals and 4.8% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 4.12 and the average family size is 4.34.
In the city the population is spread out with 35.8% under the age of 18, 13.0% from 18 to 24, 32.3% from 25 to 44, 13.8% from 45 to 64, and 5.1% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 26 years. For every 100 females there are 100.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 98.3 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $28,941, and the median income for a family is $29,844. Males have a median income of $21,039 versus $16,733 for females. The per capita income for the city is $9,340. 25.2% of the population and 23.3% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 31.5% of those under the age of 18 and 18.7% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
External links
- Huntington Park official website (http://www.huntingtonpark.org/)
Template:Cities of Los Angeles County, Californiade:Huntington Park