Hollywood was established in 1853 for growing crops. The farming was so successful that by 1870, Hollywood became a thriving agricultural community. On February 1, 1887, a man named Harvey Henderson Wilcox submitted a grid map of Hollywood to the Los Angeles County recorder’s office. It was the first official document with the name “Hollywood” printed on it.

In 1878, the first film in Hollywood was created by a man named Eadweard Muybridge. The film was called “The Horse In Motion”. It was produced to settle a bet about whether or not horses galloped with all four hooves of the ground.

In 1896, Alice Guy-Blanché was the first female filmmaker. She got her start in films when she was 22 while working as a secretary in Paris for Léon Gaumont, an inventor who began manufacturing motion-picture cameras. Blanché’s first film she made was “La Fée aux Choux” (“The Cabbage Fairy”). After her second movie in 1902, Gaumont made Alice the head of film production at his company and helped create an organized studio system years before Hollywood was a company town and trained luminaries of the art.

In 1906, Florence Lawrence was the first female to act in a film. She starred in a silent short film about crimes. She was known as “The Biograph Girl”. Lawrence appeared in almost 300 films and became one of the first women to lead a US film studio. She was also the manager and main actress of the Lawrence Dramatic Company. She even was an inventor and was credited as the creator of the turn and brake signals in automobiles. Lawrence was a successful businesswoman and used her talents to open a cosmetic store that featured her own line of makeup products.