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Fletcher Bowron

Fletcher Bowron (13 August 1887-11 September 1968) was the Republican Mayor of Los Angeles from 26 September 1938 to 1 July 1953, succeeding Frank L. Shaw and preceding Norris Poulson.

Biography[]

Fletcher Bowron was born in Poway, California in 1887, and he became a lawyer in 1917 and served in the US Army during World War I. After the war, he rose in the ranks of California Republican politics, serving as a superior court judge from 1926 to 1938 and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1938 to 1953. He oversaw his city's rapid expansion, partly due to its importance as a center of military industries during World War II, and he began construction on the Los Angeles International Airport and the elaborate freeway system and supported the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war. However, high taxes and police corruption contributed to his re-election defeat in 1953.

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