310 Area Code – Los Angeles, California: Location, Time Zone & History

Few area codes carry as much cultural weight in Southern California as 310, which split off from area code 213 on November 2, 1991 to serve West Los Angeles, the South Bay, and coastal Los Angeles County as demand for phone numbers outgrew the original numbering plan.

Within the entertainment industry it became shorthand for prestige, tied to neighborhoods like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Malibu; a 2005 Los Angeles Times feature described actors and talent agents specifically seeking out numbers in this code for the status they signaled. That symbolic value later collided with practical necessity: when an overlay was proposed for the reduced territory, Westside residents pushed back for years against losing seven-digit local dialing, delaying its introduction until the 424 overlay finally went into service on July 26, 2006, as the first overlay implemented in California.

The territory also lost ground geographically in 1997, when 562 split off the Gateway Cities, including Long Beach, along with part of Orange County. Today it still reaches Culver City, Manhattan Beach, and Torrance alongside its coastal and Westside communities, and its economy spans entertainment and talent representation, aerospace anchored by SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, and a cluster of technology startups nicknamed "Silicon Beach."