According to the United States Census Bureau, East Los Angeles is designated as a census-designated place (CDP) for statistical purposes.

[3] The concentration of Hispanic/Latino Americans is 95.16 percent, the highest of any city or census-designated place in the United States outside of Puerto Rico.

[11] In February 1921 Janss announced that it had purchased 150 acres (61 ha) adjacent to the end of the streetcar line on Stephenson Avenue, now Whittier Boulevard, south of Belvedere Heights, and divided the empty land into housing lots of square-mile grid cells.

However, unincorporated areas were often forced to incorporate or be annexed into these taxing entities in order to obtain critical municipal services such as water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

[17] East L.A. is located immediately east of the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles, south of the El Sereno district of Los Angeles, north of the city of Commerce, and west of the cities of Monterey Park and Montebello.

According to the 2010 United States Census, East Los Angeles had a median household income of $37,982, with 26.9% of the population living below the federal poverty line.

East Los Angeles has a very large Latino population that consists of Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Nicaraguans.

[50] The United States Postal Service East Los Angeles Post Office is located at 975 South Atlantic Boulevard.

In the early 1900s, people needing to access the cemeteries on the east side took the streetcar, the Stephenson Avenue Line.

Historian Matt Roth of the Auto Club says Whittier Boulevard is the main thoroughfare through the east side.

[53] The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) provides bus service from East L.A. throughout the L.A. area.

[57] In 2017, a petition was started to remove the name D. W. Griffith from the East Los Angeles middle school because his 1915 film The Birth of a Nation celebrated the Ku Klux Klan.

Construction of a new Ednovate Charter High School to be named Esperanza College Prep was started in October 2021.

[74] The Oscar De La Hoya Ánimo Charter High School was temporary in the Salesian Boys and Girls Club of Los Angeles before it moved to it new location in Boyle Heights (it opened its doors in August 2003).

In 2004 the library moved to its current location, a 26,300 square feet (2,440 m2) facility designed by Stephen Finney of the Glendale firm CWA AIA, Inc.

[81] The library was rededicated again in November 2014 after a renovation and expansion that added a meeting room, teen area, and outdoor reading patio.

In December 1931, the Church held its first outdoor procession in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a ritual that continues today.

[85] Starting in the 1960s, labor leader Cesar Chavez and members of the United Farm Workers met with the Claretian priests, who also became activists, in the church's basement.

In October 1993, the Los Angeles City Council and the County Board of Supervisors approved the renaming of the stretch of roadway, but agreed to delay the change until 1994 and to put up historic plaques along Brooklyn Avenue to accommodate the opposition,[86] many of whom believed that the new name would cause people to forget the Jewish history of the area.

The Golden Gate Theater is the first East Los Angeles building listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The Latino Walk of Fame was inaugurated on April 30, 1997, to honor outstanding leaders who have made historical and social contributions with a Sun Plaque on Whittier Boulevard the heart of East L.A.

The merchants’ association of East Los Angeles sponsors a comprehensive clean-up campaign that cleans the sidewalks and gutters daily and removes litter and trash.

El Pino (The Pine Tree) is a large bunya pine located on the southeastern corner of Folsom Street and N. Indiana Street overlooking the Wellington Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles and the Boyle Heights from atop a small hill.

[94] The people of East Los Angeles consider the tree a living monument of the area's multifaceted ethnic background.

Then more buildings were added in time, in conjunction with the East Los Angeles Library, turning the southern end of the park into in effect a civic center.

The park is a popular place for festivals and host musicians, artisans, fishing and other events in its lakeside amphitheater.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife supplies the lake with rainbow trout during the Winter through early Spring and catfish during the Summer.

The county purchased the original 1.47 acres (0.59 ha) of park property from Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on March 8, 1938.

The park includes two outdoor basketball courts, a ball diamond, children's play areas, a community building with a community room, a computer technology building with a computer room, picnic and barbecue areas, and a tennis court.

In 1957 600,000 cubic yards (460,000 m3) of soil that had been removed from the construction of the Los Angeles Civic Center was transported to the City Terrace County Park.