THE HISTORY OF LAKEWOOD, CA (THE HISTORIES OF CITIES WITH MO EP1).

Añadido: 2026-05-09

[00:00:07]Today we're exploring how Lakewood helped define modern suburbs and why its impact still affects millions of Americans today. Welcome to a new series we call the history of cities with Mo.

[00:00:18]I'm Moises Palomo, SoCal Realtor, and we're starting off with Lakewood, California.

[00:00:26]We'll explore how Lakewood became much more than just a group of homes. It grew out of Tongva homelands, then Mexican ranchos, then farmland owned by families like the Bixby and Clark family.

[00:00:38]Eventually, the land became a planned suburb shaped by major developers with landmarks like the Lakewood Center and Danny's Donuts. Lakewood tells a story of how vision, industry, and community came together to create a blueprint for American suburbs. Let's get into it.

[00:00:55]Lakewood didn't just grow fast. It grew so fast that people thought it appeared overnight. But long before the first house was built in Lakewood, before families moved in, before the Lakewood shopping center, even this land had already seen many lives. So now the real question is before liquid existed, who did this land belong to? And how did empty fields become a blueprint for modern-day America?

[00:01:24]Before Mexico, this land was used by the Tongva, an indigenous community that lived throughout what is now Southern California. Historical evidence show that the Tongva lived in the Los Angeles basin and nearby coastal areas for over 8,000 years. Their territory included present- day Los Angeles County, parts of Orange County, and Catalina Island, a large channel island used by the Tongva for fishing, trade, and village settlements. They built villages near rivers and coastlines and lived in dome-shaped homes made from tool reads.

[00:02:00]The Tongava used the land's natural resources by gathering acorns and plants, fishing in rivers, the ocean, and hunting small animals to support their communities. But this land did not remain in the Tongva hands forever. In the late 1700s, Spanish missionaries and settlers arrived in California, claiming the land for Spain. The Tongva's traditional way of life was disrupted, and their land was absorbed into mission territories. When Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, large ranchos were granted to Mexican citizens under the Mexican land grant law.

[00:02:37]However, after the Mexican-American War, the US signed the treaty of Wal Lupe Hadalgo, which promised Mexican land owners that they could keep their land.

[00:02:47]But in reality, owners had approved land ownership in US courts in English. On top of this, the system made it extremely difficult for them to keep their land. They had expensive legal fees just to defend their claims and they were required to provide written proof or maps of their land which often didn't exist because boundaries under Mexican ruling were informal. It was common for court cases to drag on for years. While new US property taxes made it even harder for people to keep their land, some land owners face pressure from settlers and developers who try to buy their land at very low prices. Over the next few decades, many families lost their land through the legal system.

[00:03:29]Historians describe this as a form of structural or legal disposition.

[00:03:37]So by the time American families started buying this land, the system had already done its work. Many Mexican land owners had already lost their land. This is where families like the Bixby, for example, began acquiring large amounts of land through legal purchases. In 1866, the Bixby family first took ownership of land when Flint, Bixby, and Co. purchased the ranch from John Temple. In 1897, the Bixby family sold over 7,000 acres of farmland to notable industrialists, US senator, and one of the so-called richest men in America, William A. Clark.

[00:04:18]In 1904, the Montana Land Company was formed to manage the Clark's family's land. Much of this land was part of the former Rancho Los Alamito's holdings. It remained agricultural and was leased out for farming and grazing. Following the deaths of William A. Clark in 1925 and his brother J. Russ.

[00:04:38]During 1928, leadership of the land had shifted to their nephew Clark J. Gus Bonner. Bonner began shifting plans for the land from purely agricultural use toward residential development as a Los Angeles real estate market. Boom. That year, the company was already planning housing on Lakewoods Villages 2,000 acre site. These plans the company had in mind set the stage for his eventual development. In the 1930s, Clark Bonner decided that he wanted to divide the land into residential lots. While subdividing the land, he had the idea to make his subdivision more attractive by building the Lakewood Country Club and Golf Course, which opened in 1933. This is one of the earliest landmarks developed in the area, designed in the classic golden age style of golf architecture by well-known golf course architect William P. Bell, the golf course included the Bowin Lake, a lake created by Edward Bowin's artisian well in the 1890s. The well struck a powerful aquifer, forming a lake that became a local landmark and even supplied water to Long Beach for a while. Bonner used a lake and golf course as a centerpiece to draw in buyers, turning farmland into a desirable residential community while planning streets and lots around the course. During the 1930s and into the 1940s, residential development around Lakewood moved pretty slow because the nation was in depths of the Great Depression and there were fewer people looking to buy homes. By 1936, a handful of lots had been sold and only a few streets had been laid out. It wasn't until the 1940s that housing demand began to grow. This growth followed the completion of the nearby Douglas aircraft defense plant as many people working in the defense industry began moving into the area. During this time, Bonner continued promoting smaller subdivisions such as his Mayfair and Lakewood Gardens. However, large-scale suburban growth was still limited. In late 1947, Clark Bonner died of a cerebral hemorrhage in his late 50s. His death left the massive Montana ranch without a clear development plan, which opened the door for large-scale developers to take over. By 1949, his widow Violet sold the remaining Montana land company acreage to developers who would soon transform the region into a large planned community that would become modern-day America.

[00:07:07]So, who actually built Lakewood as we know it? In 1949, the developers Lewis Boyard, Mark Taper, and Ben Weingart purchased the remaining acreage for their planned community. They started off by forming the Lakewood Park Corporation and planned something that has never been attempted at this scale.

[00:07:26]This is where they decided to build a whole city like a factory.

[00:07:32]After World War II, millions of veterans were returning back home. The baby boom was beginning and the GI build had just rolled out, which gave returning World War II veterans access to affordable mortgages. This made America desperate for housing. The city of Lakewood solved this housing problem by building homes rapidly. At peak, builders average roughly one completed home every 7 to 8 minutes, roughly 40 to 60 homes each day, and once as many as 110 homes in a single day. Many of these houses shared similar styles and floor plans which help workers keep such a fast pace. At the Lakewood Park and Lakewood Mutual sales offices, long lines of veterans waited to buy one of the roughly 17,500 homes that were sold nearly as fast as they were built. Newspapers at the time described it as a city assembled like a factory product. Entire neighborhoods rose in months. It only took a few years for the community to be established.

[00:08:34]As we talk about Lakewood's history, it is also important to recognize that while it created opportunity, those opportunities were not all equal. The community was also shaped by housing discrimination that limited who could live there. While Lakewood helped build the American middle class, it also reflected the racial segregation that was common in postw World War II residential areas. Early developers included restrictive covenants and property deeds that made it clear that homeowners had to be white. Real estate ads highlighted FHA approved tracks and federal lending standards at the time favored white borrowers which reinforced segregation. These practices along with tactics like uh real estate agents steering non-white families away from Lakewood meant by the 1960s the city's population was overwhelmingly white with only a small amount of minority residents in a city of more than 67,000 people. These decisions contributed to long-term racial and economic disparities in housing and home ownership in the area.

[00:09:37]Now, here's something many people don't realize. Lakewood quickly came to life once the first residents moved in. Early residents talked about how emotional it was to finally own a home. And in 1950, one of the first recorded residents of Lakewood was Navy veteran Jim Huffman.

[00:09:52]Shout out you, Jim. Not far behind then came the first shops, restaurants, and businesses that would serve this growing community. In 1952, popping up as a town first major shopping hub was the Lakewood Center. It quickly became the go-to place to shop and was one of the earliest outdoor shopping centers in the region. Its design featured a long open air walkway with landscaped areas and parking all around. It wasn't just a liquid shopping center bringing the community together. A dining chain that became nationally famous started right there in Lakewood. In 1953, Harold Butler and Richard Gac opened a tiny shop called Danny's Donuts. They eventually turned the small shop into one of the most famous 24-hour diners in the world. Danny's Donuts later evolved into Denny's as Butler expanded the restaurant beyond donuts and coffee.

[00:10:47]Today, Lakewood, California looks very different from farmlands and ranches that once covered this land. What began as one of America's first largescale suburban housing developments is now home to a diverse population with newer generations bringing different cultures, businesses, and traditions into the neighborhoods. Shopping centers, restaurants, and local businesses have expanded far beyond the early establishments and now reflect the busy commercial life that defines much of the city. And while many of the original homes from 1950s still stand, today there's a wider range of home styles in Lakewood. So when people talk about the past of Lakewood as boring or a cookie cutter city, they're missing the point.

[00:11:27]Lakewood wasn't just a factory of homes.

[00:11:29]It was a response to a national crisis and a model that reshaped how Americans live. And whether we're talking about housing affordability today or the way suburbs are designed, we're still living with Lakewood's legacy. Because Lakewood wasn't just a city, it was a blueprint that changed American history. Thank you for watching the Lakewood History. I'm Moes Palomo, a Socrat realtor, and I love the history of homes and would be happy to help you if you're looking to buy or sell a historic home. If you'd like to learn more about buying or selling a home in Southern California, feel free to send me a text. You could also click the link in my description to tell me more about your situation, and afterwards, we could set up a time to chat. And if you want to learn more about the history of the Bixbies in Long Beach, stay tuned for my next video.

[00:12:14]BOOM.