Commerce is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States.

The Los Angeles River forms part of its southwestern boundary, and the Rio Hondo separates it from Downey.

The ranch remained intact until Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, reputedly once the wealthiest woman in Los Angeles, sold some of it around the turn of the 20th century.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (later the Union Pacific) both were built through what would become the community, as was the Pacific Electric Railway's Whittier Line.

In the late 1940s, industrial leaders banded together with residents in the communities of Bandini, Rosewood, and Laguna to encourage commerce.

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 Outlets mall, which occupies the site of a former tire factory.

[6] 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.

[7] Commerce is also the site of Williams Ranch, on which is the swimming hole that the Sleepy Lagoon Murder of José Díaz took place in 1942.

The Sleepy Lagoon swimming hole was located near Slauson and Eastern Ave.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.5 square miles (17 km2), over 99% of it land.

According to the 2010 United States Census, Commerce had a median household income of $48,729, with 16.5% of the population living below the federal poverty line.

These were the ten cities or neighborhoods in Los Angeles County with the largest percentage of Latino residents, according to the 2000 census:[31] Mexican (78.4%) and Irish (0.9%) were the most common ancestries.

[37] Commerce is also one of the few cities in California that provides its residents with free bus service.