Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is a city in Los Angeles County. Located within 5.71 square miles, and surrounded by the cities of Los Angeles and West Hollywood. It had a population of 33,792 in 2019.

The city is home to many celebrities, luxury hotels, and the Rodeo Drive shopping district.

Originally a Spanish ranch where lima beans were grown, Beverly Hills was incorporated in 1914 by a group of investors who had failed to find oil, but found water instead and eventually decided to develop it into a town.

History - The area was settled by Maria Rita Quinteros de Valdez and her husband in 1828. They called their 4,500 acres of property the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas. In 1854, she sold the ranch to Benjamin Davis Wilson (1811–1878) and Henry Hancock (1822–1883). By the 1880s, the ranch had been subdivided into parcels of 75 acres, and was being rapidly bought up by Anglos from Los Angeles and the East coast.

Gaspar de Portolá arrived in the area that would later become Beverly Hills on August 3, 1769, traveling along native trails which followed the present-day route of Wilshire Boulevard. Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker acquired most of it and used it for farming lima beans. At this point, the area was known as the Hammel and Denker Ranch. By 1888, they were planning to build a town called Morocco on their holdings.

Geography - Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. Specifically, Beverly Hills is bordered on the northwest by the Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel-Air and the Santa Monica Mountains, on the east by West Hollywood, the Carthay neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, and on the south by the Beverlywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Most residents live in the "flats" of Beverly Hills, which is a relatively flat land that slants towards the hills, and includes all of Beverly Hills south of Sunset Blvd. Santa Monica Boulevard divides the "flats" into two areas, locally known as "North or South of the tracks," referring to the train tracks that were once used by the old Pacific Electric streetcar line that traversed Beverly Hills along Santa Monica Blvd. Houses south of Wilshire Boulevard have more urban square and rectangular lots, in general smaller than those to the north. There are also more apartment buildings south of Wilshire Boulevard than anywhere else in Beverly Hills, and the average house value south of Wilshire is the lowest in Beverly Hills.

The ZIP codes for Beverly Hills are 90209, 90210, 90211, 90212 and 90213.

Along with the Los Angeles communities of Bel-Air and Brentwood, it is one of the "Three Bs”, a wealthy area in the Los Angeles Westside.

Schools -

Beverly Hills is served by Beverly Hills Unified School District.

Public

• Hawthorne Elementary School, K-5
• Horace Mann Elementary School, K-5
• Beverly Vista Middle School, 6-8
• Beverly Hills High School, 9-12 

Private

• Good Shepard School, Pre K-8
• Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy