From the Gathering of the Waters to Jan. 28, 1914: How Beverly Hills Became a City

Long before the boutiques and estates, this land was known for its water. According to the city’s official history, streams from Franklin, Coldwater and Benedict canyons came together near today’s Beverly Drive and Sunset Boulevard. The Tongva people treated the spot as sacred and called it the Gathering of the Waters. In Spanish it was El Rodeo de las Aguas, a name that survives in Rodeo Drive.

The rancho years

The city’s history records that in 1838 the Mexican governor of California granted the Rodeo de las Aguas land to María Rita Valdez Villa, the widow of a Spanish soldier. She raised cattle and horses there. In 1854 she sold the ranch to Benjamin D. Wilson and Henry Hancock for $4,000. Drought followed. In 1868 Edward Preuss tried to build a German farming colony called the “City of Santa Maria,” and another drought ended it.

In the 1880s Charles Denker and Henry Hammel bought the land and planted lima beans while planning a North African–themed town called Morocco. That plan collapsed with the economy in 1888.

Oil, then water, then a name

In 1900, Burton Green and his partners bought “Morocco” for the Amalgamated Oil Company. Their wells didn’t produce, so in 1906 they reorganized as the Rodeo Land and Water Company. Green and his wife renamed the property Beverly Hills, after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.

Green hired landscape architect Wilbur D. Cook, who laid out wide, curving streets that followed the hills. According to the city, the first streets were Rodeo, Canon, Crescent, Carmelita, Elevado and Lomitas, built in 1907, along with a three-block green called Santa Monica Park, the start of today’s Beverly Gardens.

A hotel to sell the lots

Lots still sold slowly. To bring in buyers, the Beverly Hills Hotel opened in 1912 at the site of the Gathering of the Waters. The city’s history says it became the center of community life and served as a theater, meeting place and church. (Our history of the hotel.)

Five hundred residents and a deadline

California required at least 500 residents to incorporate. The city’s own account says canyon land was added in 1914 to reach that number. In Robert S. Anderson’s Beverly Hills: The First 100 Years, the vote took place on Jan. 23, 1914, and passed 66 to 13. The paperwork then had to reach the Secretary of State in Sacramento in time. The city and Los Angeles County both give Jan. 28, 1914, as the official incorporation date. By the county’s chronological list, it was the 31st of the county’s 88 present-day cities to incorporate.

Staying independent

In 1923, a proposal to annex Beverly Hills to Los Angeles, which promised a reliable water supply, went to voters. Residents including Will Rogers and Mary Pickford campaigned against it, and it failed 507 to 337. Rogers later became the city’s honorary first mayor and, according to the city, helped push for a new City Hall and a U.S. Post Office in the early 1930s. That post office building is now The Wallis.

Today the city describes itself as 5.7 square miles with about 35,000 residents. The 2020 U.S. Census counted 32,701. It is a general-law city with a council–city manager form of government.