Boyle Heights is a neighborhood east of Downtown Los Angeles on the East Side of Los Angeles. For much of the twentieth century, Boyle Heights was a gateway for new immigrants. This resulted in diverse demographics, including Jewish American, Japanese American and Mexican American populations, as well as Russian American and Yugoslav populations. Today, the neighborhood is populated mostly by working class Latinos.

The Boyle Heights area was known in the Spanish and Mexican era as "Paredon Blanco" or "White Bluffs." While within the four-league limits established for Los Angeles under Spanish dominion in 1781, this area east of the river was sparsely populated. Among those who resided in the Paredon Blanco area were the Lopez and Rubio families, each of which had adobe houses and vineyards and continued to live there for many decades.

One of the more notable early documented events in Paredon Blanco occurred during the American invasion of Mexican California in Fall 1846. After a group of Americans loyal to the invaders gathered for mutual defense at the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino home of Isaac Williams at today's Boys' Republic institution in modern Chino Hills, native Californios defending their land secured the surrender of the Americans. The prisoners were then marched to Paredon Blanco and kept there under strict watch for several months, though it is not known whether they were held at a residence of the Lopez or Rubio families. The intercession of ranchers William Workman, of La Puente, and Ignacio Palomares, of San Jose (modern Pomona), led to the peaceful release of the men who were nearly executed by the enraged Californio defenders.