Duarte is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 21,727. It is bounded to the north by the San Gabriel Mountains, to the north and west by the cities of Bradbury and Monrovia, to the south by the city of Irwindale, and to the east by the cities of Irwindale and Azusa. Duarte is located upon historic U.S. Route 66 which today follows Huntington Drive through the center of the city. The town is named after Andrés Avelino Duarte, a Californio ranchero who founded the community.

Around 500 B.C., a band of Shoshonean-speaking Indians standard settlements in what is now the San Gabriel Valley. These Native Americans came to be called the Gabrieliño Indians (after San Gabriel, the local mission) by in the future Spanish explorers, but now pick to be called the Tongva. Since the San Gabriel Valley area was home to large numbers of oak trees such as coast stimulate oak and interior stir oak, a staple of the Tongva diet was an acorn meal made by boiling acorn flour.

Duarte’s history in the reveal of Europeans dates support to 1769, when all land in California was claimed by the king of Spain. The first Europeans visited the San Gabriel Valley, including Duarte, during a 1769 expedition from San Diego to Monterey Bay commanded by Don Gaspar de Portolà. Accompanying Portolà was a Franciscan priest from Junípero Serra’s order in Mexico, Juan Crespí, who served as the diarist of the expedition. Much of what is known of to the fore California is known deserted from the detailed descriptions recorded by Crespi.

On September 8, 1771, the Franciscans normal the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel in the San Gabriel Valley. The mission was a resting reduction for in advance California travelers and gathered most of the original Tongva into an agricultural lifestyle. Following Mexican independence in 1821, the mission lands were nationalized.