The transformation of Los Angeles during the decades of Mason’s active adult life was one of the most rapid urban growth episodes in American history. The arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1876, the subsequent rate wars between competing rail lines that temporarily made cross-country tickets available for almost nothing, and the marketing campaigns that promoted Southern California as a healthful paradise all contributed to a population surge in the 1880s.
For someone who owned property in the Spring Street commercial corridor, this was an extraordinary environment. Property that was modestly valuable in the 1860s became substantially more valuable as the city’s population grew and commercial activity concentrated along its major streets. Mason’s decision to hold and develop her property through this period, rather than selling early, was economically consequential.
The city’s Black community was small throughout this period. In 1860, perhaps one hundred Black people lived in the city. The community grew through subsequent decades but remained a minority of the overall population. First AME Church, Mason’s school for Black children, and the informal networks of support she maintained were essential infrastructure for a community that lacked the institutional backing available to larger or more established populations.
Mason’s prominence in this community was not simply a matter of wealth. It was the product of decades of direct service: delivering babies, treating the sick, providing material support to people in need, paying institutional bills when institutions could not pay them. Her wealth enabled her generosity, but the generosity was not something the wealth caused; it appears to have been a consistent feature of her character from the earliest years after her emancipation.