The exhortation to "Go West!" has always sparked the American imagination. But for the gays, lesbians, and transgendered people who have moved to Los Angeles over the past two centuries, the City of Angels provided a special home and gave rise, in turn, to one of the most influential gay cultures in the world. Drawing on rare archives and photographs as well as over 200 interviews, Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons chart L.A.'s unique gay history, from the first missionary encounters with Native American cross-gendered "two spirits" to cross-dressing frontier women in search of their fortunes; from the bohemian freedom of early Hollywood to the explosion of gay life during World War II to the underground radicalism set off by the 1950s blacklist; and from the 1960s gay liberation movement to the creation of gay marketing in the 1990s. Faderman and Timmons show how geography, economic opportunity, and a constant influx of new people created a city that was more compatible with gay life than any other in America.