About Monterey Park

Monterey Park is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, 10 miles (16 km) east of downtown Los Angeles. The city's motto is "Pride in the past, Faith in the future". Monterey Park is part of a cluster of cities, along with Alhambra, Arcadia, Temple City, Rosemead, San Marino, and San Gabriel in the west San Gabriel Valley, with a growing Asian American population, making up 66.9% of its resident population at 2010; 47.7% of its residents are of Chinese descent, the largest concentration of Chinese Americans of any municipality in the United States. According to the 2010 Census, the city had a total population of 60,269.

For at least seven thousand years the land was populated by the Tongva (Gabrielino) Native Americans. The Tongva lived in dome like structures with thatched exteriors, an open smoke hole for ventilation and light at the top. Both sexes wore long hair styles and tattooed their bodies. During warm weather the men wore little clothes but the women would wear minimal skirts made of animal hides. During the cold weather they would wear animal skin capes and occasionally wore sandals made from hide of yucca fiber. With the arrival of the Spaniards, Old World diseases killed off many of the Tongva, and by 1870 very few Native-Americans had survived. In the early 19th century the area was part of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel mission system and later, the Rancho San Antonio.

Beginning in the 1970s, well-educated and affluent Asian Americans began settling in the west San Gabriel Valley, primarily to Monterey Park. The city council subsequently tried and failed to pass English-only ordinances. In 1985 the City Council of Monterey Park approved drafting of a proposal that would require all businesses in Monterey Park to display English language identification on business signs.

In the 1980s, Monterey Park was also referred to as "Little Taipei" or affectionately, "The Chinese Beverly Hills" by a local Chinese-language newspaper, "Asian Week". Many businesses from Chinatown, Los Angeles began to open up stores in Monterey Park. In the 1970s and 1980s, many affluent waisheng ren Taiwanese immigrants moved abroad from Taiwan and began settling into Monterey Park. Mandarin Chinese dialect was predominant in the city during that time. By the late 1980s, immigrants from Mainland China and Vietnam began moving into Monterey Park. By the 1990 census, Monterey Park became the first city with an Asian descent majority population in the continental United States. Timothy P. Fong, a professor and director of Asian American studies at California State University, Sacramento, describes Monterey Park as the "First Suburban Chinatown".