[10] The Mexican land grant for Rancho Santa Anita was issued to Perfecto Hugo Reid and his Tongva wife, Victoria Bartolomea Comicrabit, in 1845.

Reid documented the Gabrieliño Native Americans in a series of letters written in 1852,[11] and served as a delegate to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention.

In 1885, the main line of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad, in which Baldwin was a stockholder, was opened through the ranch, making subdivision of part of the land into a town site practical.

In 1889, on a site just north of the corner of First Avenue and St. Joseph Street, adjacent to the Santa Fe tracks, Baldwin opened the 35-room Hotel Oakwood to be the centerpiece of his new town.

By the turn of the 20th century, Arcadia had a population nearing 500 and an economy that was coming to be based on entertainment, sporting, hospitality, and gambling opportunities, the latter including an early version of the Santa Anita race track.

[12][13][14] The estate had a significant Greek Revival-style colonnaded "Parthenon" bathhouse/gymnasium beside a large pool, an apiary and aviaries, kennels and stables, tennis courts and pergolas, and preserved the native oak woodlands.

[13] After an extended debate, with local citizens and regional preservationists efforts to preserve the historic main house, the city council voted to approve demolition for a real estate development by new owners in 1999.

[13] The "Anoakia" mansion, all other significant estate structures and outbuildings, garden features, and numerous California sycamore and Coast live oak trees were demolished for 31 luxury home sites in 2000.

During World War I, Arcadia was home to the U.S. Army's Ross Field Balloon School, at the present-day Santa Anita Park site.

After World War I, Arcadia's population grew and local businesses included many chicken ranches and other agricultural activities.

Scenes of many of Arcadia's interesting older sites can be viewed in a series of historic watercolors painted by local artists Edna Lenz and Justine Wishek.

Thoroughbred horse racing had flourished briefly under Lucky Baldwin, who founded a racetrack adjacent to the present site, until it was outlawed by the state of California in 1909.

In 1942 during World War II, the racetrack grounds were used as a processing and holding site for Japanese Americans who had been removed from their homes and communities for forced relocation and internment under President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.

"[19] The Assembly Center held people from late March through the end of October 1942, when the internees were relocated inland to permanent internment camps at Manzanar and Tule Lake in California, and eight others in Western states and Arkansas.

In November 1942 the center was turned over to the United States Army Ordnance Corps for training purposes and was officially renamed Camp Santa Anita.

[17] Arcadia largely grew up as the well-to-do suburb of neighboring Pasadena, with many early residents being the sons and daughters of long-established Southern California families.

A large tract of estate homes was developed by Harry Chandler, the scion of the Los Angeles Times, who lived in adjacent Sierra Madre, California.

The postwar boom saw Arcadia grow rapidly into a suburban residential community, with many of the chicken ranches being subdivided into home lots.

During the postwar boom, a modern commercial district developed along Baldwin Avenue south of Huntington Drive in west Arcadia.

In 2016, Arcadia was ranked the fifth most expensive housing market in the United States by Business Insider, with an average listing price of $1,748,680 for a four-bedroom home.

[44] In 2012, Arcadia was ranked seventh in the nation on CNN Money magazine's list of towns with highest median home costs.

In 2005, the Westfield Santa Anita completed its first phase of expansion, featuring a new food court, numerous smaller retailers, various full-service eateries in an area known as Restaurant Square, and a 16-screen AMC Theatres megaplex.

Eligibility is based on federal and state criteria including the No Child Left Behind program, Academic Performance Index (API), and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

The requirements are many and strict, and are based on such areas as a strong curriculum, solid library media services, professional teachers, and counseling programs at all grade levels.

[73] In 2010, BusinessWeek ranked Arcadia as the best place to raise children in the state of California for the second year in a row, citing the city's excellent school system as one of the factors in addition to the low crime rate.

Arcadia Station is located northwest of the intersection of 1st Avenue and Santa Clara Street, and is served by the Metro A Line.

USC Arcadia Hospital underwent a major renovation and expansion in 2006, and in the fall of 2011, a new five-story patient tower and new emergency department were opened.

This four-story brick building, known as Philomena Hall, was connected to the hospital by an underground corridor and provided accommodations, classrooms and a gymnasium for the nurses.

The city is mentioned by Jack Kerouac in his novel On the Road: Sal, the protagonist, is put off by "preppy" teens when he stops for food at a local drive-in restaurant with a young Mexican woman.

In a motel located in Arcadia across the street northeast from Santa Anita Racetrack, author Hunter S. Thompson wrote much of his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in the 1970s.