whats the history of long beach california?

Question

historical background of long beach california

Answer 1

Well, I've lived in Long Beach for the past several years, and I know a bit of its history, but by no means all of it. It appears that Long Beach has remade itself several times. In bits and pieces, I can tell you what I know.

Although it's often linked with Los Angeles (the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area), it's a large city in its own right; with about 450,000 people, it's the 34th largest city in the United States. And it is NOT part of L.A. -- although it is on the southern border of Los Angeles County, just above the Orange County line.

In the beginning, of course, there were Coast Indians in the area (I forgot which tribe), and in fact one of their sacred burial grounds ("Puvugna") is presently a vacant lot on the campus of California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), just north of the large VA hospital. A decade ago, the university wanted to build on the parcel, and demonstrators stopped the project because of the Native American claims. Ten or twelve years later, the ground lies fallow.

The Spanish missionaries and then the Mexicans were here ... that part of the story is related in an excellent history of old California called "Cattle on a Thousand Hills." Way back when, some Spanish soldier (I forgot his name) got a grant of 300,000 acres from the king of Spain. That included everything around here except for the pueblo de Los Angeles and the San Gabriel mission. (The San Fernando mission was further north.)

In a boundary dispute, the San Gabriel mission got 120,000 of the soldier's acreage, leaving him with "only" 180,000. That was later subdivided into six ranchos of approximately 30,000 acres each. (I used to know the names of all six.) Rancho San Antonio (the Lugo family) had the land below the mission and some below the Verdugo spread which was located between the mission and Los Angeles; Rancho Dominguez was everything south of L.A. and west of the Los Angeles River (but a sheep herder named Sepulveda carved Rancho Palos Verdes out of that by adverse possession; Dominguez didn't kick Sepulveda off his property). East of the river and south of Rancho San Antonio was Rancho Los Cerritos -- now a large part of Long Beach. And the other one I remember is Rancho Los Alamitos, probably along the shoreline between the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers -- also a large part of Long Beach.

All these big ranchos had large adobe haciendas as their headquarters. Today they're museums, including the Lugo household (now the Gage Mansion in Bell Gardens on Gage Avenue, named after California Governor Gage, who married into the Lugo family); the Los Cerritos rancho next to the Virginia Country Club in the Bixby Knolls area of L.B.; the Los Alamitos rancho next to CSULB, which is really a testimonial to the Bixby family; and Rancho Dominguez on Alameda near Sepulveda (now a religious establishment for some order of monks, deeded by the last olf the Dominguez daughters).

When the Americans took over in 1848 or thereabouts, the descendents of the Spanish/Mexican landholders had to justify their land titles before a U.S. court in San Francisco. That's a story in itself, but the bottom line is that all except Dominguez lost everything to American land speculators.

Enter the land speculators. The two big names from the earliest period were Bixby and Irvine. I think they were related, and they came to California with sheep. Anyway, they each put together huge parcels of land, and the Bixby and Irvine Land Companies still own monstrous portions of Long Beach and Orange County respectively.

Next comes the Southern Pacific Railroad. All that started with the Big Four (Huntington, Stanford, Crocker, and Hopkins) up in the Bay Area. Later it extended down to the L.A. area. Henry Huntington, a nephew of Collis, was the mover and shaker in L.A. Tied into the rail business in the L.A. area was the port problem. Los Angeles is inland, so the two contenders for the Port of Los Angeles were Santa Monica and Wilmington/San Pedro, next to Long Beach. Some guy -- he's famous, but I forgot his name -- was Huntington's competitor, and he got the port established in Wilmington/San Pedro, and rail lines ran the 20 miles up the Alameda Corridor into L.A.

Soon after that, Long Beach began to grow as a competitor to the Port of Los Angeles. (The two ports are right next to each other.) Also, somewhere in here, oil was discovered in what is now Signal Hill, a small city completely surrounded by Long Beach. So the early growth of Long Beach can be attributed to the port facility (when combined with the Port of Los Angeles, one of the very largest in the world) and the discovery of oil.

All this brought a lot of opportunity, and a lot of jobs. Promoted by the Bixby Land Company, sales campaigns in the east and midwest enticed people to move west. Long Beach became known as "Iowa on the Pacific."

In the 1920s, Long Beach and Los Angeles were separated by farmland. The main highway between the two cities, now Long Beach Boulevard, was known as the "American Road." Whenever it was built, probably in the 1930s, the Long Beach Freeway (I-710) replaced L.B. Blvd. as the main intercity thoroughfare. Today, the 710 Freeway carries more truck traffic than any other stretch of highway in the nation.

Sometime before World War II, Long Beach got a double boost. The Navy established a major base here, so L.B. became known as a Navy town, and aircraft pioneer Donald Douglas started building airplanes here. Douglas Aircraft was a major producer and a major employer, especially during the war. Long Beach airport is one of California's best-kept secrets ... although it's mostly a general aviation airport, it has a magnificent 7,000 foot runway and a quaint, art-deco terminal that makes you think of aviation's early days. It was built right next to the Douglas plant.

The Navy meant boom times for Long Beach. Downtown they had the "Pike" (way before my time) that must have had arcades, a roller coaster, and lots of entertainment.

Cal State University opened its Long Beach campus in 1949, and as mentioned above, there's a large VA hospital next door.

The city has several interesting neighborhoods, including Belmont Shore with its trendy shops along Second Street, the upscale Naples section featuring canals (with gondolas) and truly stunning Christmas displays; and a number of other named neighborhoods with elegant houses.

Perhaps between the 60s and the 80s, Long Beach went into decline. The Navy pulled out and the aircraft industry went into a tailspin. Douglas was bought out by McDonnell Aircraft, and McDonnell-Douglas became part of Boeing. Zillions of jobs were lost, and the one remaining program, the C-17 Air Force transport, may be on its last legs.

The city's demographics have changed also. The last few decades have seen massive immigration from Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua), Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam), and the Pacific Islands (Samoa, Guam). Gang activity is a problem. North Long Beach, the West Side, and a central area approximately bounded by Cherry, Willow, the 710 Freeway, and perhaps 7th or 10th Street are densely populated and sometimes unsafe at night. The East Side and a few "island" neighborhoods such as the Wrigley section and California Heights remain middle or upper middle class.

The City Council has tried to turn that around. They spent a lot of money on downtown, and everything down there looks new. Pine Avenue has rebounded, and there's a lively night life down there. A large gay population populates the east side of downtown along 4th Street and thereabouts. Now the city is spending money beautifying the neighborhoods.

To wrap this up, I'd say Long Beach is a pretty interesting place. I've lived in other urban environments including New York City, and I'd say this is as diverse a place as I've ever been. In fact, Long Beach may be the most diverse large city in the country, considering the mix of whites, blacks, Mexicans, Pacific Islanders, and Southeast Asians. And yes, we have substantial numbers of Indians from India and Chinese from China.

Ummm ... I guess that's what I can tell you about this place. Quite interesting, I'd say.

Answer 2

it used to be called "virginia city"..it was the site of a great oil strike in the early 1900's and still is pumping oil from local weels and at signal hill drill points!!it used to have great "bathing and surfing" beaches before the breakwater was constructed to enclose the entire bay!!the navy and the long beach naval shipyard were very important to the defense and strategic abilities of u.s. forces prior to and after world war two and korean conflict!!the whole pacific fleet once called this port home and it's a damn shame that it's been given over to the storage and congestion of red chinese cargo cantainers that they won't take back under any circumstances...especially with american trade goods!!the great drydock that once held the great warships of an even greater nation has been "filled" with dirt to accomodate more cheap plastic toys and goods that we could make better ourselves!!this drydock once held the battleship "missouri" on whose decks the japanese imperial force finally surrendered!!it's been filled with dirt!!a damn shame for all of america!!