Beverly Hills is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles.

It began as a Spanish ranch (Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas) and was later bought out by American speculators and used for growing beans and with the idea of founding a city. It was then bought out by prospectors for oil in the early 20th century. Although there was oil under the ranch, these early prospectors failed to find enough of it to make it worth extracting, but they did water, so they decided to go ahead and found the city instead as was originally planned. They called it Beverly after Beverly Farms in Beverly, Massachusetts. They added hills because the area is relatively hilly.

It is now one of the best known - and expensive - places to live in the world.

It is famous for the Rodeo Drive shopping district, although most of Beverly Hills is not like that (see the video).

In 1919, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford bought land on Summit Drive and built a mansion. Because they were famous and glamorous, other people wanted properties nearby, and so the area attracted other movie stars. The neighborhood has been home to Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Ray Charles, President Richard Nixon and others.

Most of Beverly Hills is actually flat land, and only the rich live on the hills area north of Sunset Boulevard. Most of Beverly Hills is thus known as 'the flats'.

Although you don't see that as you drive around Beverly Hills, there is productive oilfield here and four oil wells continue to pump up oil.