Commerce is a suburb of Los Angeles in Los Angeles County, California, United States.
The population was 12,568 at the 2000 census. It is bordered by Vernon on the west, Los Angeles
on the northwest, East Los Angeles on the north, Montebello on the east, Downey and Bell Gardens
on the south, and Maywood on the southwest.
The Los Angeles River forms part of its southwestern boundary, and the Rio Hondo separates it from
Downey.
Commerce is served by the Long Beach and Santa Ana freeways, as well as the Metrolink
commuter rail service. It is usually referred to as the "City of Commerce" to distinguish it from
the common noun.
In the 19th century, the area was known as Rancho San Antonio. It was owned by
Don Antonio Maria Lugo, mayor of Los Angeles between 1815 and 1820.
Its conversion to an industrial area began in 1887, when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway
built its main line through the area. The ranch remained intact until Arcadia Bandini de Baker,
a descendant of Lugo and reputedly once the wealthiest woman in Los Angeles, sold some of
it around the turn of the 20th century.
By the 1920s, factories had arrived. In the late 1940s, industrial leaders banded together with
residents in the communities of Bandini and Rosewood and part of Bell Gardens to encourage commerce.
They changed the name to match that goal.
The city was incorporated in 1960 to prevent neighboring cities such as Vernon and Los Angeles
from annexing industrial land for tax revenue.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Commerce successfully negotiated the turbulent period of deindustrialization
that hammered nearby cities such as South Gate and Norwalk, maintaining much of its
manufacturing and goods-distribution base and successfully converting former industrial land
to lucrative commercial uses. The most notable example of this phenomenon is the Citadel outlet mall,
which occupies the site of a former tire factory.
With a major rail yard within its borders, Commerce has also benefited greatly from the huge
expansion in international trade traffic through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,
albeit at the expense of severe air pollution caused by truck congestion on the Long Beach Freeway.
Commerce residents have an enviable array of civic services funded from taxes on the local card club,
the Commerce Casino, which accounts for 46% ($19.5 Million for budget year 2005/06) of
Commerce's tax revenues, and the Citadel.
This includes four libraries, a senior center, a teen center, an aquatics center, and a city-owned
camp located in the San Bernardino National Forest free of charge to Commerce residents.
Commerce is also one of the few cities in California that is able to provide its residents with
zero-fare bus service. As might be expected, residential turnover is low compared to surrounding cities,
although Commerce has moved from an almost exclusively Anglo city at its inception to one that is now
overwhelmingly Latino.
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