A BIT OF LOCAL HISTORY

by THE UNION WEEKLY

Presently Long Beach is a city known for few things: crime, Snoop Dogg, and Holé Molé, but the city’s past is a horse of a different color. The International City’s history is filled with thieving port workers, The Pike, and one of the biggest oil fields in the country. Long Beach might not look like much now, but it used to be a pretty rad place to live. Basically imagine having enough employment for everyone in the city, ample parking and a place to have fun without using drugs. Here’s a look at Long Beach, as the city you wished you lived in.

THE BIXBY FAMILY

Long Beach would not be the thriving city that it is today without the Bixby family. If you look around Long Beach, there is a lot of shit named after them. Bixby Knolls, Bixby Ranch, and Bixby Hills to name a few. Essentially the Bixbys were the Rockefellers of the west.

They developed the city into a desirable place for the wealthy, while at the same time employing many lower income people. Without their contributions to the city, Long Beach would not be as culturally diverse or as affluent as it is today.

The Bixbys were members of Flint, Bixby & Co., a sheep and cattle company and they bought most of what is now Long Beach, Downey and Lakewood. They started renting out the land to Asian immigrants and eventually bought back the land at a lower price, which might also explain the extreme poverty that exists in the city. Because of the success of the company and because the family owned most of the land, Long Beach’s economy began to grow rapidly. Immigrants started flooding in and, sure enough, were mostly employed by the Bixbys. Long Beach has earned the nickname “The International City” due in part to the Bixbys because they largely employed immigrants from around the world on their ranch. 

As the Bixby empire grew, so did the appeal of living in Long Beach. The population doubled after 1890, when the Bixby family fortune grew the most. The economic success of Long Beach was dependent upon Bixby Ranch because they owned all of the land, meaning that vendors and businessmen had to buy the property directly from the family. Their involvement in oceanfront properties also made Long Beach a desirable place to live for other wealthy entrepreneurs. The Bixby family bought a large chunk of the oceanfront land and developed several neighborhoods that still exist today. You can thank them for Belmont Shores, Belmont Heights and Bixby Knolls.  

Eventually, the Bixby property was bought by another family who refurbished the original farm and made it into a tourist destination for, well, the kind of people who like to look at farms. Actually, the ranch is interesting because they have installed a museum and several lush gardens around the property that are particularly beautiful in the spring. Also, what else are you going to do? Go to the Pike? I don’t think so.

-Simone Harrison

THE PIKE

Our oceanfront “fun” zone, The Pike, began just about as lame and it is now. In 1902 the Long Beach Bath House and Amusement Company noticed that the Pacific Electric Line would end right at the shore of our then-growing city. So, starting with a mere 12-foot boardwalk and swimsuit rental stand, The Long Beach Bath House began a rapid development, and the amusement zone eventually came to be known as The Pike: “The Place Where Fun Was Invented!”

The Long Beach Pike was known across the country as the West Coast’s Coney Island. In fact, in 1954 The Pike was listed as one of the five largest amusement parks in the US, boasting over two hundred concession stands and housing several of the world’s most innovative attractions. The most well known attraction was the famous Cyclone Racer Roller Coaster. It was called a “racer” roller coaster because it had two trains that rode on separate tracks alongside each other throughout the whole ride. The Cyclone Racer was at one point the largest and fastest coaster in the country, eventually closing in 1968.

The original Bath House, later called The Plunge, went on to provide visitors with a large, heated, saltwater pool if the Pacific was too cold—though the beach never lost its appeal. Interestingly enough, The Plunge had other attractions to offer besides swimsuits and a heated pool. The pool man, Allen Warrick was a local celebrity for donning full dive gear and vacuuming the biggest swimming pool in Long Beach, submerged in nine feet of water, breathing through a hose.

In 1932, the 8,000 seat Municipal Auditorium opened, which was surrounded by a man-made lagoon on three sides. Because the Auditorium needed to be protected from storms and whatnot, a half-circle breakwater was constructed around the lagoon, serving as a pier for people to take strolls, and even drive on. Dubbed the Rainbow Pier, the arching walkway stretched from Pine to Linden! But when some dude wanted to build a convention center, the Municipal Auditorium was torn down, along with the Rainbow Pier.

The Pike officially closed in 1979, and while every trace of the original Pike has been demolished to make way for the lamest ocean-side entertainment plazas possibly ever, there is still one feature of The Pike that exists—the problem is it’s underground. The Jergins Subway is an underground walkway that still stands under Ocean Boulevard right now! Built in 1927, at the height of The Pike’s popularity­—the tunnel was used by 2,000 per-hour as they crossed Ocean Boulevard. The tunnel had two entrances on the north side of Ocean, and there was one entrance in front of the State Theatre. Since the Jergins Municipal building was torn down, the tunnel had been blocked off, but there is talk of possible restoration in the future.

-Caitlin Cutt

OIL

Oil! People love it and cars can’t get enough of it. California is famous for its variety and abundance of natural resources and Southern California is no slouch in that department, either. Long Beach has been home to a number of oil fields, which have been up and running since oil’s discovery underneath Signal Hill in 1921. Oil is as much a part of the life-blood of California as it is Long Beach.

It’s probably common knowledge that Signal Hill used to be the epicenter of the oil rush in Long Beach. The hill, now widely renowned as a make-out spot for couples that like looking at our city for whatever reason, sat directly on top of what was once the Long Beach Oil Field, which is now a mere ghost of the petroleum dynamo that it once was.

While Long Beach has never been accused of being an aesthetically pleasing city, back when Signal Hill’s oil drilling operation was in full bloom the place looked like something out of Blade Runner. The fields surrounding what is now your favorite Best Buy were once festooned with oil wells as far as the eye (or at least panoramic cameras) could see.

An even greater field was found running along the coast in the form of the Wilmington Oil Field. Wilmington ended up being the fourth largest field in the nation, no doubt being a direct aid in the tens of thousands of students that commute to and from our fair university every single day.

Oil fields pepper the coastline of Southern California in long chthonic fields ranging from Huntington Beach on up to San Pedro and Torrance. There are plenty of other fields in the state—some of the biggest in the country, in fact (that is if you consider Alaska to be part of this country, which the Union does not). It also bears stating that Northern California could lay claims to the most important oil fields in the state, but, really, Northern California can go take a flying fuck at the moon. Long Beach is where it’s at. And if you don’t like it, then you can cram it up your ass with walnuts. That’s right, walnuts.

If, for whatever reason, you’re walking with your sweetheart along the shore of Long Beach near downtown (presumably because you didn’t feel like driving out to an actual beach with your partner), you’ll notice a small island in the bay populated entirely by modern art and Jurassic Park concept art. If that’s what you thought, then you’d only be half-right and your girlfriend will probably leave you for someone that isn’t a dummy. In reality, that clean-cut visage of modern architecture hides hideous, brutal machinery used to pump liquefied dinosaurs from the bowels of the earth.

It’s an oil derrick, but you wouldn’t know it from all of the trees unless someone (like maybe me or your bright old lady) told you so.

-James Kislingbury

THE PORT

If you watch a movie or a TV show filmed anywhere near Long Beach, it seems blatantly local thanks to the appearance of the port’s huge cranes and the Vincent Thomas Bridge connecting to the cityscape. Since its inception in 1911, the port of Long Beach has been responsible for making Long Beach a town of commerce. With the discovery of oil off-shore locally in 1936, billions of dollars worth of revenue has been flowing in and out of the ports. During the Depression, the money was going to tycoons, and little of it was going to the men doing the heavy lifting. Thus, the little guys, including my own Grandpa, Fred Van Mulligen, began skimming-off-the-top, while the higher-ups turned a blind eye. Pilfering from the docks helped support my family, and thousands of local families, for decades.

Pilfering fruits, vegetables, clothes and other goods was common down at the docks until the 1970s with the introduction of large cargo containers (the big multi-colored boxes you see today). Before these cumbersome bins—which can only be moved by the massive cranes that have also become a staple of Long Beach scenery—came along, the docks were stacked with smaller crates and barrels that were moveable with just a few hands, or much smaller manned cranes. These crates were easy to open up and “lose.” I’ve even heard stories of Grandpa Fred coming home from his job as a foreman, complaining that his legs hurt, and removing his jeans only to reveal another pair, then removing that second pair to reveal another underneath those.

But skimming off the top wasn’t the only thing common down at the docks of Long Beach. These longshoremen were blue-collar everyday guys with great senses of humor. And they made sure to have a good time while making a living. Looking to boost morale and get a laugh from his crew, Grandpa Fred once climbed on top of a storage container and stripped down to his bare ass.

The container was hooked up to a crane and then slowly lifted out of the cargo bay as he stood up to greet his crew. Little did he know that an ocean liner (a la the Queen Mary) had just come in next door and was disembarking. As he leapt up, holding the cable to keep his balance, chin up in the air, he heard a laughter that didn’t quite sound like it was just coming from his men. He looked down to find a group of his men surrounded by hundreds of tourists laughing hysterically. He immediately dropped belly-first to the top of container, yelling at the crane operator to lower the load.

I’m proud of my grandpa because he was one of the thousands of men who’ve worked at the port, estimated around 316,000 today. Those men who are responsible for doing all the heavy lifting and manual labor that puts bananas in schoolchildren’s lunch pails and new fashion trends in window displays, making Long Beach, Long Beach.

-Michael Pallotta

Special thanks to Latticia Montoya of the Historical Society of Long Beach, for providing us with all the pictures you see here (at a considerable discount).