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.
This land was hospitable. It sheltered the Native Americans who settled small villages along the path of their migrations.
Hispanic Heritage
Hispanic families lived in this part of what would become Los Angeles County long before Lakewood was built.
Spaniards welled up from Mexico in the 1700's to take possession of this land. Manuel Nieto, who had served as a Spanish soldier during Gaspar de Portola’s first land expedition north to California from Mexico in 1769, was granted 300,000 acres near the San Gabriel River when he retired. His land stretched from the San Gabriel River to the Santa Ana and from the mountains of the coast range to the sea.
When one of Manuel Nieto’s descendants, Rafaela Cota, married the American, Jonathan Temple, part of her dowry was a share of the old Spanish land grant called the Rancho Los Cerritos. Jonathan Temple, Yankee merchant and entrepreneur, became Don Juan Temple on his marriage to Rafaela and the steady stream of Americans following him to California was about to become a westward flowing river.
All of California was part of Mexico for a quarter of a century after Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended a war between the United States and Mexico, turned California over to the United States.
In 1866, a killing drought ended the days of the great ranchos and a new breed of Americans poured into what was now the State of California.
Two pairs of American brothers purchased Rancho Los Cerritos. They were Benjamin and Thomas Flint and Llewellyn and Jotham Bixby, who raised sheep on the nearly treeless land until the Clark brothers came along.
Land boom
Between 1869 and 1897, the old rancho skyrocketed in value from $5,000 for the entire ranch in 1869 to $50 an acre in 1897 when the Bixby Investment Company sold 6,979 acres for $348,950 to William Clark of Montana.
These 6,979 acres are now the sites of the City of Lakewood, the area of Long Beach called Lakewood Village, and parts of north Long Beach.
Clark’s Montana Land Company grew sugar beets, hay, and alfalfa on these acres, but, intrigued by the growth of nearby Long Beach, planned a future residential development on a part of the property.
The village
By the early 1930s, several houses had been built in the rural area known as Lakewood Village. The houses were favored with a pleasant setting and the proximity of the Lakewood Country Club. It has been suggested that Bouton Lake, located on the golf course and formed in 1895 when drilling operations opened an artesian well, is the source for the name “Lakewood.”
The Second World War began an era of profound change for the future Lakewood. The Douglas Aircraft Company completed a massive defense plant and home for the Douglas workers were begun in what is now north Lakewood.
Yet, even as the defense workers moved into their new homes, the fields between South Street and Lakewood Village remained empty. But, not for very long.
By 1949, most of the land comprising west Lakewood -- some 3,500 acres -- had been purchased for nearly $9 million by Louis Boyar, Ben Weingart, and Mark Taper. From their experience as homebuilders in Long Beach and Norwalk, they knew that the Lakewood area was ready for planned development. Together, they formed the Lakewood Park Corporation and, with the financial assistance of the Prudential Insurance Company, began building the first of 17,000 new homes.
Fastest growing
As construction began, the builders sought innovative ways to complete what was the nation’s first, post-war, planned community.
Taking their cue from the efficient production methods that had helped win the war, the contractors built the houses on an “assembly line” basis. Construction plans called for the contractors to begin no fewer than 509 homes per day, all built to Veteran’s Administration specifications. During one unbelievable week, 567 homes were begun. So efficient were the mass production techniques of the builders that, for every ten houses built, enough cement was recovered to build the foundations for the eleventh.
Other innovations included underground wiring for streetlights, landscaped parkway panels separating residential streets from major highways, and provisions for many neighborhood shopping centers.
New homes
Veterans taking advantage of the “GI Bill of Rights” purchased these new homes. Only a small down payment was required and the payments on the mortgage could be spread over 30 years. Two bedroom homes were $49.94 a month (excluding taxes and insurance) and three bedroom homes were $54.00 a month.
To attract prospective homeowners to Lakewood, the company built a 100-foot tower behind their sales office at the corner of Lakewood Boulevard and Candlewood Street. A bright rotating beacon atop the tower could be seen for miles around.
Good planning made Lakewood a “going concern” long before it became a city.
Louis Boyar, one of the men who later formed the Lakewood Park Corporation, began designing his “dream city” in the late 1930s, years before Ben Weingart negotiated for the purchase of the remaining Montana Ranch acreage from the Senator Clark family.
Boyar’s master plan, which was eventually approved by the County Planning Commission in 1950, called for several innovations:
- Street lighting with underground wiring, improvements not found in earlier sub-divisions, which generally put in no street lighting at all.
- Parkway panels to separate residential streets from the major highways.
- Provision for community parks situated throughout the tract.
Key to the master plan was the design of Lakewood Center, which was conceived of as the West’s first regional shopping mall and the first to truly accommodate the automobile. Financing for Lakewood Center was also made possible by the Prudential Insurance Company. In 1949, the St. Louis based May Company department store chain became the major leaseholder in the proposed development.
City Grows
In the following years, as the needs of its residents grew, so did the city. In 1957, Lakewood took over the Park, Recreation, and Parkway District and created a city department for recreation.
Also in 1957, the city acquired the privately owned Lakewood Water and Power Company and began to provide water to the western portion of the community.
With the exception of incorporation, the city has experienced only one period of expansion. The unincorporated portion of the county east of the San Gabriel River was brought into the city by a series of annexation votes by its residents, ending in 1967.
Since its early days, the City of Lakewood has grown and prospered. It has changed in some ways but stayed the same in the ways that are most important. Lakewood now has a population of some 81,000, served by thirteen parks totaling 151 acres.
