The fight for Lakewood's future began in earnest in early 1954 after clever legal challenges by Lakewood supporters stalled Long Beach plans for a series of neighborhood-by-neighborhood annexation elections.
Facing the certainty of new annexation battles with Long Beach, Lakewood residents began to mobilize for the formation of their own, independent city.
The documents in this section show the growth of the incorporation movement.
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Streaming media segments bring Lakewood's past, present, and future to light. Using new Flash media, Lakewood Online highlights a series of special CityTV documentaries on city history.
Video clips blend historical photography, film and video footage with interviews of Lakewood residents and city officials. The original collection was created as part of the city's fiftieth anniversary celebration. The city turned fifty on Friday, April 16, 2004. Click for library.
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In 1969, City Attorney John S. Todd looked back at the momentous events of 1949-1954 and told the thrilling story of Lakewood’s struggle for independence. His account is the only history of Lakewood’s first years written by one who was there, in the thick of the fight, to make Lakewood a city.
Todd’s first-person history is an invaluable source of information about the making of Lakewood and the politics of cityhood. It’s also the story of one man’s vision for the future of a community that he helped to build.
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The Lakewood Story is a large-format book with 218 pages, many of them with photographs. This unique “trade” paperback contains many historical photographs and was written through a grant from the Weingart Foundation. It is an account of Lakewood’s history, its community traditions, and the neighborhood values that sustain the city’s quality of life today.
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Not every one in Lakewood resisted annexation in 1953 or favored incorporation in 1954. Some residents, business interests, and Long Beach political leaders worked to speed annexation and, when that effort stalled, to stop incorporation.
The documents in this section reveal the issues and passions of those who had a completely different vision of Lakewood's future.
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Before incorporation in 1954, before the fight over Long Beach annexation in 1953, before completion of the 17,500 houses of western Lakewood . . .
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Lakewood's innovative "contract plan" for providing municipal services was big news in the 1950s, and the media examined the new city to learn how it ticked.
Lakewood city officials also had a story to tell. In the pages of professional and popular magazines, they detailed the origins and development of the Lakewood Plan for local government contracting.
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The City of Lakewood is peppered with distinct names of those who helped create and shape "tomorrow's city today."
So, who was Mae Boyar or Angelo Iacoboni? How about Simon Bolivar? And, why are there so many facilities named after Ben Weingart?
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In the beginning was the land itself -- the gentle plain created by the San Gabriel River and its sister streams on which the homes and neighborhoods rest.
For tens of thousands of years, the river carried the run-off of the winter rains and channeled the annual spring floods near the site of the future city hall.
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