From the 1780s onward, the area that is now Lawndale was part of the El Rancho Sausal Redondo, a land grant given by the Spanish colonial government that includes much of what is now the South Bay region. In 1905 E.L Hopper first subdivided the area and named it after a Chicago suburb. Lots sold slowly and different promotions were tried such as promoting Lawndale as a chicken raising area. The first railway to run through Lawndale was the Inglewood Division of the Redondo Railway which would later become part of the Pacific Electric "Red Car" system. It ran down the middle of Railway Ave. (now Hawthorne Blvd.) until 1933. In 1927 the Santa Fe railroad arrived. After World War II, the immense demand for housing from returning veterans and California newcomers resulted in Lawndale's formation as a bedroom community. In 1959 it was incorporated as a city.
Roy Rogers once lived here for a short time and Fred Dryer grew up in Lawndale.
Starting in the 1970s Lawndale's relatively low housing prices but less desirable location relative to its neighboring cities attracted absentee landlords and a substantial portion of its residents increasingly became renters.
For a time in the 1980s, with new cycle of expansion of defense industry nearby, many young people who wished to live in the Beach Cities found that they simply could not afford to do so, and settled in less glamorous inland cities such as Lawndale. But with the contraction of this industry after the cold war, Lawndale reverted back to its prevous pattern. Lawndale has attempted to attract more owner/residents with the 2003 completion of an urban renewal project along the city's stretch of Hawthorne Boulevard (California State Highway 107), a major South Bay thoroughfare.
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