Beverly Hills: Tongva Village to Lima Bean Field to the World's Most Famous Zip Code

The Tongva people, whom the Spanish called Gabrielino, lived in this coastal basin for at least two thousand years. Their villages near the confluence of two seasonal streams gave the future neighborhood its Spanish name: Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, the ranch of the gathering of the waters.

In eighteen twenty-eight, Maria Rita Valdez, the Afro-Latina widow of a Spanish soldier, settled four thousand five hundred acres here, building an adobe near present-day Sunset Boulevard and Alpine Drive. The rancho passed through several hands until the eighteen eighties, when it was subdivided into farms. For decades this ground was one of the most productive lima bean fields in Southern California.

In nineteen hundred, oil speculator Burton Green and partners bought the bean field, drilled many dry holes, and decided the land was better suited to real estate. Green's wife suggested naming it Beverly Hills after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. The subdivision opened in nineteen oh seven; the city incorporated in nineteen fourteen. When silent-film stars moved in during the nineteen twenties, a bean field became the most recognized address on earth.