However, the West Hollywood still technically remained not a city but an unincorporated region of Los Angeles County. In 1925, the inhabitants of Sherman voted to change the name to West Hollywood in order to emphasize its relationship to its glamorous neighbor. After founding the United Artists production company, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks established the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios near Santa Monica Boulevard, which still exists today as The Lot. With the emergence of the motion picture industry in the early 20th century, the town of Sherman became an attractive residential area for film stars working in nearby Hollywood, and soon the movie business entered the city itself. At the intersection of the two railways, he established the headquarters of his Los Angeles Pacific Railway Co., the railway’s power generators and a small residential area for railway workers-a settlement he named “Sherman.” In 1886, a real estate developer and entrepreneur named Moses Hazeltine Sherman bought a portion of Rancho La Brea from Hancock in order to construct segments of two electric railways, the Pacific and the Pasadena lines, which connected Los Angeles to the small, beachfront town of Santa Monica. Its history stretches back over 300 years. WeHo’s Infamous Past & Colorful History Founded in 1984 as the 84th city in Los Angeles County, West Hollywood is a young, vibrant community with a colorful and entertaining past.
