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A motorcyclist in Los Angeles prepares to turn while driving along a street that's engulfed in a thick haze of fog and smog in 1958.Bettmann / Getty
The city of stars could be called the city of smog.
Los Angeles has had years of thick air pollution due to a ballooning population, unregulated industry, a booming car industry, and its natural geography.
In 1943, during World War II, pollution blanketed the city so intensely residents thought Japan had launched a chemical attack. Over the next three decades, improvements came, but they were slow.
The Washington Post described it in 1953 as "eye-burning, lung-stinging, headache-inducing smog."
The biggest victory against smog came in 1970. President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, which led to air pollution regulations, and allowed California to make even stricter provisions within its state.
In the early 1970s, the EPA launched the "The Documerica Project," which leveraged 100 freelance photographers to document what the US looked like. By 1974, they had taken 81,000 photos. The National Archives digitized nearly 16,000 and made them available online, and we've selected 35 in the Los Angeles area.
Here's what LA looked like before the EPA.
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