Long Beach is a large city located in southern California, USA, on the Pacific coast. It is situated in Los Angeles County, about 20 miles (32 km) south of downtown Los Angeles. Long Beach borders Orange County on its southeast edge.
Long Beach is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the sixth-largest in California. As of 2008, its estimated population was 492,682. In addition, Long Beach is the 2nd largest city within the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The Port of Long Beach is one of the world's largest shipping ports. The city also has a large oil industry; oil is found both underground and offshore. Manufacturers include aircraft, automobile parts, electronic and audiovisual equipment, and home furnishings. It is also home to headquarters for corporations such as Epson America, Molina Healthcare, and SCAN Health Plan. Long Beach has grown with the development of high-technology and aerospace industries in the area.
History
Indigenous people have lived in coastal southern California for at least ten thousand years. Over the centuries, several successive cultures inhabited the present-day area of Long Beach. By the time Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century, the dominant group were the Tongva people. They had at least three major settlements within the present day city boundaries. Tevaaxa'anga was an inland settlement near the Los Angeles River, while Ahwaanga and Povuu'nga were coastal villages. Along with other Tongva villages, they were forced to relocate in the mid 1800s due to missionization, political change, and a drastic drop in population from exposure to European diseases.
The Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos were divided from the larger Rancho Los Nietos, which had been granted by the Spanish Empire's, King Carlos III in 1784 to a Spanish soldier, Manuel Nieto. The boundary between the two ranchos ran through the center of Signal Hill on a southwest to northeast diagonal. A portion of western Long Beach was originally part of the Rancho San Pedro, and was in dispute for years, due to flooding changing the Los Angeles River boundary, between Juan Jose Dominguez and Manuel Nieto's ranchos.
Rancho Los Cerritos was bought in 1843 by Jonathan Temple, a Yankee who had come to California in 1827 . Soon after he built what is now known as the "Los Cerritos Ranch House", an adobe which still stands and is a National Historic Landmark. Temple created a thriving cattle ranch and prospered, becoming the wealthiest man in Los Angeles County. Both Temple and his ranch house played important local roles in the Mexican-American War.
Meanwhile, on an island in the San Pedro Bay, Mormon pioneers made an abortive attempt to establish a colony (as part of Brigham Young's plan to establish a continuous chain of settlements from the Pacific to Salt Lake).
In 1866 Temple sold Rancho Los Cerritos to the Northern California sheep-raising firm of Flint, Bixby & Co, which consisted of brothers Thomas and Benjamin Flint and their cousin Lewellyn Bixby, for $20,000. Two years previous Flint, Bixby & Co had also purchased along with Northern California associate James Irvine, three ranchos which would later become the city that bears Irvine's name. To manage Rancho Los Cerritos, the company selected Lewellyn's brother Jotham Bixby, the "Father of Long Beach", to manage their southern ranch, and three years later Jotham bought into the property and would later form the Bixby Land Company. In the 1870s as many as 30,000 sheep were kept at the ranch and sheared twice yearly to provide wool for trade. In 1880, Bixby sold 4,000 acres (16 km²) of the Rancho Los Cerritos to William E. Willmore, who subdivided it in hopes of creating a farm community, Willmore City. He failed and was bought out by a Los Angeles syndicate which called itself the "Long Beach Land and Water Company." They changed the name of the community to "Long Beach", which was incorporated as a city in 1888.
Overlooked, but probably even more influential in the development of the city was another Bixby cousin, John W. Bixby. After first working for his cousins at Los Cerritos, J.W. Bixby then leased land at Rancho Los Alamitos, and then put together a group consisting of himself, mega-banker I.W. Hellman and Lewellyn and Jotham Bixby to purchase the rancho. In addition to bringing innovative farming methods to the Alamitos (which under Abel Stearns in the late 1850s and early 1860s was once the largest cattle ranch in America), J.W. Bixby began the development of the Alamitos' oceanfront property near the city's picturesque bluffs. Under the name Alamitos Land Company, J.W. Bixby named the streets and laid out the parks of his new city. This area would include Belmont Heights, Belmont Shore and Naples and would soon become a very thriving community of its own. Unfortunately, J.W. Bixby died in 1888 of apparent appendicitis, and the Rancho Los Alamitos property was split up with Hellman roughly getting the southern third, Jotham and Lewellyn the northern third and J.W. Bixby's wife and heirs keeping the central third. The Alamitos townsite was kept as a separate entity but it was basically run by Lewellyn and Jotham's Bixby Land Company.
When Jotham Bixby died in 1916 the remaining 3,500 acres (14 km²) of Rancho Los Cerritos was subdivided into the neighborhoods of Bixby Knolls, California Heights, North Long Beach and part of the city of Signal Hill.
The town grew as a seaside resort (The Pike was one of the most famous beachside amusement parks on the West coast from 1902 until the 1960s) and then as an oil, Navy, and port town. The town was once referred to as "Iowa by the sea," due to a large influx of people from that state and other states in the Midwest. Huge picnics for each state were a popular annual event in Long Beach until the 1960s.
The Long Beach earthquake of 1933 was a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that caused significant damage to the city and surrounding areas. Most of the damage occurred in unreinforced masonry buildings, especially schools. One hundred twenty people died in this earthquake.
Long Beach once had a sizable Japanese-American population mostly working in the fish canneries on Terminal Island and small truck farms in the area, but the Japanese and Japanese Americans were removed for internment in 1942, and most did not return after their release from the camps. Due to this, and other factors, they now make up less than 1% of the population of Long Beach. There is still a Japanese Community Center and a Japanese Buddhist Church in Long Beach. The Japanese-American Cultural Center is just over the Gerald Desmond Bridge and the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro.
The nonprofit Aquarium of the Pacific, located in Downtown Long Beach, opened to the public in 1998 and has since become a major attraction visited by more than 13 million people since its opening. The Aquarium was rated #2 Los Angeles area Family Destination in the most recent Zagat U.S. Family Travel Guide, second only to Disneyland. The Aquarium’s architecture is inspired by the towering, breaking waves of the Pacific and mirrors the fluid and dynamic temper of the ocean. Kajima International, developers of the world’s most critically acclaimed and technologically advanced aquariums, was the developer of the Aquarium of the Pacific and architects included the Los Angeles office of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassanbaum and Esherick Homsey Dodge and Davis of San Francisco. Construction was a joint venture of Turner Construction Company and Kajima International. The Aquarium of the Pacific recently made history as the first in the museum, zoo, or aquarium industry to become a Climate Action Leader for voluntarily measuring, certifying, and reporting its green house gas emissions to the Climate Action Registry and the public.
Geography
Long Beach is located at 33°47' North, 118°10' West, about 20 miles (30 km) south of downtown Los Angeles. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 170.6 km² (65.9 mi²). 130.6 km² (50.4 mi²) of it is land and 40.0 km² (15.4 mi²) of it (23.42%) is water.
Climate
Due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, temperatures in Long Beach are moderate throughout the year. Temperatures recorded at the weather station at the Long Beach Airport, 4 miles (6.4 km) inland from the ocean, range more greatly than those along the immediate coast. During the summer months, low clouds and fog occur frequently, developing overnight and blanketing the area on many mornings. This fog usually clears by the afternoon, and a westerly sea breeze often develops, keeping temperatures mild. Heat and humidity rarely coincide, making heat waves more tolerable than they would be otherwise.
Long Beach's geographic location directly east of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, paired with its mostly south facing coastline results in the community having sign
City of Long Beach, CA - Police Homepage
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CSU Long Beach Police
University Police Department 1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90840 Physical Address Main Building. Brick building south of the Student Recreaction and Wellness Center
Long Beach Police Foundation
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Long Beach Police Officers Association, Incorporated.
Long Beach Police Officers Association 2865 Temple Ave., Long Beach, CA 90755 • (562) 426-1201 • (562) 426-5188 - Fax
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Long Beach Police Department (California) - Wikipedia, the free ...
The Long Beach Police Department provides law enforcement for the city of Long Beach, California, USA.
Long Beach Police Department, California Fallen Officers
The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc., (ODMP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring America's fallen law enforcement heroes. Almost 20,000 police officers, deputy ...
Shades of Long Beach - Police Department
Long Beach Police Department, Long Beach, California, ca. 1917. Mrs. Grace E. Reinhardt, front center, was the police "matron" responsible for matters involving women in custody.
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Police Departments - Long Beach, CA
Shades of Long Beach - Chief of Police Owning Library: Long Beach Public Library