INTRODUCTION

Los Cerritos is a vibrant, primarily residential community in northern Long Beach. The name Los Cerritos means “little hills,” reflecting the geography of Signal Hill and the small hills of the surrounding areas, such as Bixby Knolls. Los Cerritos began as a 27,000-acre rancho, operated primarily as a single cattle ranch. It evolved over time into ranches separately operated as part of the rancho. Smaller ranches were sold to create the Los Cerritos Colony; ultimately, land was subdivided into residential lots.

In 1784, Gov. Pedro Fages awarded a large land grant to Manuel Perez Nieto, a leather-jacket soldier who arrived in Alta California around 1771. Nieto’s grant stretched between the coastline and the main road leading from Los Angeles to San Diego, and between the Santa Ana and San Gabriel Rivers. When Nieto died, his land was divided into six parcels. Nieto’s daughter Manuela Nieto de Cota received 27,000 acres, which became known as the Rancho Los Cerritos. The Cotas built the first adobe structures on the land, known as the Cerritos. No evidence of this adobe currently exists. In 1843, the land was sold to John Temple, a transplanted Easterner who had business operations in Los Angeles. At its peak, Temple pastured 15,000 cattle, 7,000 sheep, and 3,000 horses. The export of hides through the port at San Pedro made Temple a rich man. In the 1860s, however, severe drought caused thousands of cattle to die, and Temple never restocked.

In 1866, Flint, Bixby & Company purchased the 27,000-acre rancho from John Temple for $20,000, about 75 cents an acre. Jotham Bixby became the manager and, three years later, he purchased half ownership of the rancho, organizing the firm of J. Bixby and Company. Living at the rancho for 15 years, Bixby raised his family along with 30,000 head of sheep.

As the sheep operation scaled down, Bixby focused his attention on subdividing his property. Much of the land of the Rancho Los Cerritos was divided into small farms or sold. Some farms were leased to tenants and used to grow grains or operate dairies under the direct supervision of Jotham or his son George H. Bixby. In 1890, George Bixby built a large home that became the center of the ranch management, which today is at 11 La Linda Drive. When Jotham Bixby moved his family from the rancho in 1881, he rented it to William Boyle, who ran a dairy for about 10 years. Boyle left the adobe in 1906, and Oscar King took over the dairy.

Jotham Bixby supported the California Immigrant Union, an organization formed by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to promote bringing immigrants and Easterners to California to settle the land. The purpose of the union was to facilitate the subdivision of large land holdings for these new California residents. By 1870, land values in Los Angeles County were $7 per acre and rising, and in 1878, Jotham Bixby began selling off portions of the rancho, including 1,400 acres that became the Wilmington Colony. The Cerritos Colony was part of the Wilmington Colony or, as it was sometimes called, the Wilmington Colony Tract. Bixby made sales to a number of individuals, and these individual sales of small ranches comprised the Cerritos Colony. Many of the buyers were Southern Methodists or members of the Holiness Church. Originally called the Southern Methodist Colony before being renamed the Cerritos Colony, the land was situated three miles east of Wilmington, with Willow Street and Perris Road, now known as Santa Fe Avenue, as its major thoroughfares. In 1867, a major flood caused the San Gabriel River to alter its course and cut through the central part of the rancho, and the low land along the river sprouted willow trees. Because of all the willow trees in the area, the Cerritos Colony was often called The Willows.

Bixby had the land for the Cerritos Colony surveyed into 40-acre farm lots. According to colony resident Katherine Robinson Bushong, the colony stretched from Pacific Coast Highway on the south to Wardlow Road on the north. Colony resident Evelyn Moulton recalls lots of 40, 60, and 80 acres, with 40-acre lots being one-fourth of a mile on a side. A search of deeds from 1870 to 1880 shows Bixby Company sales of farm lots or partial lots to individual colony members as well as a sale of a half-acre by Dennis Rogers to the trustees of the Holiness Church.

By 1878, the Wardlow, Parris, Kincade, Hayes, and Teel families had established themselves on small ranches of 20 to 80 acres. They were joined by the Valentine, Moulton, Robinson, Lewis, Hass, Holaday, Stewart, Martin, Saunders, Wilhoit, Tolle, Loper, Thompson, Schrode, Shaw, and McDonald families. A notice in the Los Angeles Times in 1882 noted that the colony consisted of 20 families on the southeast side of the Old San Gabriel River, which by this time was renamed the Los Angeles River.

Elijah Teel, his son George Marion Teel, and other Teel family members traveled by wagon train from Texas to California in 1869. This wagon train was made up of a group of devoutly religious people who, according to George Teel’s diary, wasted no time making themselves available for service and for places of responsibility within their churches once they arrived in California. Some were Methodists, but the Teel family became associated with the Holiness Church when in California. The Teels lived first in Garden Grove but then acquired land in the Cerritos Colony in the late 1870s. Walter Case, in his book The History of Long Beach, indicates that Elijah Teel purchased 80 acres of the colony from Jotham Bixby around 1878. No direct purchases from Jotham Bixby or the J. Bixby Company to any Teel family member was found in county records for the period 1875 to 1880, but there were sales of land to George Milton Teel, son of Elijah Teel, in 1878 by Alfred Robinson, and sales between other individuals with the Teels, including B.F. Townsend.

Elijah’s son George Marion Teel led Holiness meetings under a tent at the Cerritos Colony. The Methodists also held camp meetings in the colony. Washburn, in his History and Reminiscences of the Holiness Church, describes the September 18, 1889, Cerritos camp meeting: “The Lord is saving the people; Brothers Rogers and Morgan are in charge, Brother Holdridge assisting, pouring in red hot shot that makes sinners tremble.” Teel’s May 18, 1897, diary entry states: “Moved to Long Beach to take pastoral care of the Cerritos Holiness Church. Rented house to A.M. Morgan for $1.50 per month.” A.M. Morgan is Alfred Marion Morgan, who married George Teel’s sister Susan California “Callie” Teel. George Teel was actually moving back to Los Cerritos, having lived there as a young man when the colony started in the late 1870s.

By the 1880s, the residents of the Cerritos Colony had diversified their land use to a mix of agricultural purposes. G.M. Holaday promoted the area in the Los Angeles Times, noting the availability of water, soil good for pumpkins and corn, the Cerritos School under the management of Prof. W. Bailey, and the Methodist Camp meetings. Capt. Charles Parris had started a small orchard. In 1885, Holaday joined Cerritos Colony residents H.C. Bailey, R.B Robinson, W.W. Schrode, and S.W. Tolle to form a water district to service the residents of the colony. Also living in the area at that time were the Finley, Owen, and Wallace families. There were alfalfa, hay, and barley fields, citrus orchards, dairies, and horse ranches. The diversity of operations found in the small farms of the Cerritos Colony was significant, reflecting a dramatic change from the large, single-purpose sheep or cattle ranches of the previous era. More important, this diversity made the colony self-sufficient. In 1887, the Los Angeles Times reported that a number of the most reliable gentlemen residents declared that “the Willows can now be called a town.”

The colony families petitioned the county for the establishment of a school. L.T. Hayes, who purchased 40 acres from Jotham Bixby in 1880, donated one acre on July 7, 1881, for the school. The first trustees were Messrs. Robinson, Saunders, and Lewis. The site was approximately one acre and thick with willows. The willows were cleared, and a one-room, wood-frame building was erected on Willow Street that became the first Cerritos School, later called the South Cerritos School. In 1948, former colony residents who attended the school came back for a reunion. At the event were Callie Teel Morgan, Mrs. James A. Teel, Fannie Clarke Teel, Elnora Kincade Martin, Nettie Saunders Lewis, Elizabeth Lewis Gimmell, Katherine Robinson Bushong, Frank E. Cook, Sarah Ellison Garrison, Birdie Bailey Schilling, and John Lewis, all children who grew up in the colony.

Being so close to the Los Angeles River was a precarious situation for many of the colony ranchers. In 1887, the Lewis family fled their ranch to higher ground to wait out the rains. The Cerritos school was often closed due to bad weather. Despite the vagaries of the river’s course, the community thrived. Although the colony was building up fast, one Los Angeles Times article in 1887 reported that the only drawback was the colony’s lack of “men with energy,” but that a new class of people was coming in and “taking hold with energy.” The colony residents even established a brass band in late 1886. The band’s members were N. Roach; J. Inman; Arthur, Samuel, and Altia Thompson; B. Lyster; and C. Rolston. Their leader was Prof. Arthur Thompson.

The beginning of the Los Cerritos neighborhood as it is known today began with the first residential subdivision in 1906. Many of the first residents who purchased lots in the subdivision came from the surrounding farms, such as the King family and the Vignes family, or moved in from the colony ranches, such as the Lopers and the Moultons.

In 1890, John Louis Vignes and his wife, Mary Kent Marcellus, moved from Los Angeles to Long Beach. Vignes was the grandnephew of Don Luis Vignes, a French immigrant to Los Angeles in 1831 who was responsible for the establishment of the first commercial vineyard in Los Angeles and for whom Vignes Street in Los Angeles is named.

The Vignes family moved first to a home that had been occupied by George H. Bixby at Third Street and Cedar Avenue. Vignes listed his occupation as a stockman and his residence as Long Beach when he registered to vote on September 23, 1890. Vignes farmed with the Watson brothers on the Dominguez property, and he worked the dairy on the Watson property on the northeastern corner of Alameda Street and Wardlow Road. The strong relationship between the Watson and Vignes families was evidenced by Vignes serving as a pallbearer for the funeral of Francisca Ferrer de Watson in May 1903. After several years, the family moved to the Dominguez property before becoming one of the first homeowners in the Los Cerritos subdivision in 1910. Their home was the center of social activity in the early days of the Los Cerritos neighborhood.

Because the Vignes family believed its five daughters should be educated, they were instrumental in the establishment of schools where they lived, first as part of the Cerritos School District, then the Dominguez school when they lived on Watson land, and finally with the expansion of the Cerritos School District to serve the 1906 subdivision when they moved back into Los Cerritos. Their five accomplished daughters and their husbands represent a significant part of the early history of Los Cerritos.

Historically, the colony was the primary residential community of this area prior to the 1906 subdivision, which created the neighborhood today called Los Cerritos. Areas no longer part of Los Cerritos but part of the Cerritos Colony were portions of West Long Beach and the Wrigley District. However, well into the 20th century, West Long Beach and the Wrigley District were considered part of the Los Cerritos precinct for voter registration and federal census records.

Today, the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River separates West Long Beach, which was part of the historical residential district of the Cerritos, from the place now called Los Cerritos. The area of the Cerritos Colony that is currently east of the river and south of Wardlow Road is now called the Wrigley District. Although the physical area that was called Los Cerritos has changed significantly over time, what is left today represents the core of a community that is significant for several reasons. First, the families that developed the small farms and dairies organized themselves into a community and established a school district and water district prior to the establishment of the City of Long Beach. The survey that planned the Cerritos Colony was completed at least five years before the survey started in 1882 for Willmore City, which later became Long Beach. Second, Los Cerritos residents fought to maintain their independence from Long Beach for as long as possible. It was the invasion by oil-drilling interests that led residents to finally flee to the safety of incorporation into the City of Long Beach. But when the Long Beach School District sought to include the two Los Cerritos Schools within its district, only the “south” Los Cerritos School on Willow Street joined. On March 10, 1922, 102 registered voters of Los Cerritos signed a petition objecting to joining the Long Beach School District, and so the “north” Los Cerritos School on San Antonio Drive kept its independence for a few more years. Third, the neighborhood reflects the shifting demographics of the greater city of Long Beach, from a start where deeds limited ethnicities of residents, to an economic stratification most obvious in the housing stock from north to south reflecting the influence of the Virginia Country Club, to today’s more diverse and eclectic population.

One can speculate that the reason for the fierce independence shown by Los Cerritos residents over the course of history is geography. Bounded on the west by the Los Angeles River and the north by the Rancho Los Cerritos and then the large expanse of the Virginia Country Club golf course, Los Cerritos is not a community one can “drive through.” Access is limited to the south and eastern edges. Looking at a map today, the area shows as a dense green in the crater bounded by the 710 Freeway and the 405 Freeway. This limited access has resulted in a close-knit neighborhood rarely found in a “bedroom community” of the greater Los Angeles region. It is small, compact, and walkable, with its own school, park, and historic site. It is a place where families that move in tend to move to other homes within the neighborhood rather than leave.

While geography may have molded the current independent streak of the neighborhood, its real independent roots lie in actions of the people who occupied the historical boundaries of the residential area that was Los Cerritos. The small colony ranchers developed a self-sufficient community, with its own school and water districts, even its own brass band. They toyed with the idea of becoming an independent city. In 1922, during the battle over succession into Long Beach, there was an unsuccessful attempt to create a separate City of Willowville that included the area from Willow Street north to the Virginia Country Club. Today, the residents of these areas, West Long Beach and the Wrigley District, might not recognize their shared history with Los Cerritos, yet they share a continuation of that independent spirit.