If it were not for the vision of a woman named Daeida Wilcox Beveridge, there might not be a Hollywood at all. Shortly after her marriage to Harvey Henderson Wilcox in 1883, Daeida left Ohio and headed to the sunny climes of Los Angeles where the couple purchased a 120-acre ranch near present-day Hollywood and Vine. In August 1887, Daeida and Harvey began to plan a new town—a Christian utopia—on their ranch. They called it, “Hollywood, California”—a name she came up with—and filed a subdivision map with the LA County Recorder’s Office. However, Harvey would never get to see this vision realized since he died four years later. Daeida continued to lead the area’s development efforts and was joined by her second husband, Philo Judson Beveridge, whom she met soon after. She helped establish much of the area’s infrastructure including Hollywood’s first public library, city hall, post office, and police station. She also gave land to three churches of different denominations. By the turn of the century, Daeida’s Hollywood dream had blossomed into a thriving community of 500 people leading some to call for the city’s incorporation. Daeida and her supporters strongly opposed this idea, believing that incorporation would give an upper hand to other developments. Ironically, Daeida—because she was a woman—was not able to vote and the initiative narrowly passed, 88 to 77. Hollywood became a city on November 14, 1903.
Over the next few years, Hollywood’s population would skyrocket to 5,000 residents just as the film industry began to settle in the town. In 1910, Hollywood released its first film shot entirely in the city, a short entitled Old California. A year later Hollywood would get its first studio. Daeida died in 1914, before the great migration of filmmakers to the area a few years later. However, her legacy lives on to this day.