Sonoratown, Los Angeles

Sonoratown was a neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, California.

Sonoratown was home to many migrants from the northern Mexican state of Sonora in the mid 1800s. Many settled there after having made their way to northern California during the gold rush. The neighborhood became a slum as more and more settlers arrived. In 1914 occurred one of the first marijuana drug raids in Sonoratown, in which police raided two "dream gardens" and confiscated a wagonload of the product.

However it was also recognized as a historic site; a 1914 guidebook to Los Angeles told tourists, “Some of the [Sonoratown] homes are old adobe houses that have stood there since the town was young. Sometimes an old adobe is back in a yard, almost out of sight, sometimes it has been so freshened by paint or whitewash as to be hardly recognized, but a sharp eye will find them.”

In the early 1900s the Mexican community began to disappear as that part of Downtown Los Angeles became a desirable industrial center, with many rail yards. Later it was replaced with the New Chinatown.

There were significant populations of French and especially Italian heritage, which were almost entirely dispersed in the course of postwar suburbanization.