Los Cerritos Ranch House | |
![]() Los Cerritos Ranch House | |
Location | 4600 Virginia Road, Long Beach, California |
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Coordinates | 33°50′11″N118°11′40″W / 33.83639°N 118.19444°W |
Built | 1844 |
Website | www |
NRHP reference No. | 70000135 |
CHISL No. | 978 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | April 15, 1970 [1] |
Designated NHL | April 15, 1970 [2] |
Designated CHISL | Aug. 23, 1988 |
Los Cerritos Ranch House, also known as Rancho Los Cerritos or Casa de los Cerritos, in Long Beach, California, was "the largest and most impressive adobe residence erected in southern California during the Mexican period". [3] Los Cerritos means "the little hills" in English. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970. [2] [3] It is currently a museum.
The structure, a Monterey Colonial adobe, was built in 1844 for merchant Jonathan Temple, a Yankee pioneer who became a Mexican citizen. [4] The house was once the headquarters for a 27,000-acre (110 km2) ranch; the major activity on the ranch was cattle and sheep. [5] [6]
The land was part of the 167,000-acre (680 km2) Rancho Los Nietos land grant to Manuel Nieto that was eventually divided into six parcels, one of which was Rancho los Cerritos. [7] In 1843, Temple purchased the rancho and built the adobe house in 1844 as headquarters for his cattle operations. In 1866, Temple sold the rancho to Flint, Bixby & Company which converted the ranch from cattle to sheep. Jotham Bixby, the brother of one of the company's founders, managed and resided at the ranch from 1866 to 1881. Jotham Bixby, known as the "father of Long Beach", eventually purchased the property for himself and raised seven children at the adobe. [7] One of Jotham's children who was raised at the ranch house was Fanny Bixby Spencer, who later became known as a philanthropist, poet, and pacifist. [8]
Beginning in the late 1870s, Bixby began leasing or selling portions of the ranch, which became the cities of Downey, Paramount and Lakewood. [7] Between the 1880s and 1920, the adobe fell into disrepair. In 1929, Llewellyn Bixby (Jotham's nephew) purchased the property, [9] and made extensive renovations to the house, including plaster cement coating, a new red-tiled roof, electricity, plumbing, fireplaces, a sun porch, new floors and much of the landscaping. [7] Llewellyn Bixby died in 1942, [10] and the family sold the house to the City of Long Beach in 1955. The City turned the house into a museum dedicated to educating the public about California's rancho period. [7]
Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site was converted into, and remains, a public museum operated by the Rancho Los Cerritos Foundation in partnership with the City of Long Beach. [11] It is open for tours, programs and events on Wednesdays through Sundays. The house is furnished in a Victorian fashion as it would have been when Jotham Bixby raised his family there in the 1870s. [5] There is a visitor center with exhibits about the site's history from Native American times to the present. A formal Italian garden includes olive, pomegranate and cypress trees planted by Temple. [12] The site also features a 3,000-volume California history research library and a museum shop.
The museum was closed for 17 months from 2001–2002 to allow for seismic retrofitting, removal of lead paint and asbestos insulation, brickwork repairs and modifications to improve accessibility for the disabled. [13] [14] [15]
Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the U.S., with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California and the most populous city that is not a county seat.
Los Alamitos is a city in Orange County, California. The city was incorporated in March 1960. The population was 11,780 at the 2020 census, up from 11,449 at the 2010 census. The adjacent unincorporated community of Rossmoor uses the same 90720 ZIP code in its mailing address, but is not part of the city. The Los Alamitos Race Course is named for the city, but lies in the neighboring city of Cypress.
The Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum is a historic house museum located at 15415 East Don Julian Road in City of Industry, California, that features the homes and private cemetery that belonged to the pioneer Workman-Temple family.
The Centinela Adobe, also known as La Casa de la Centinela, is a Spanish Colonial style adobe house built in 1834. It is operated as a house museum by the Historical Society of Centinela Valley, and it is one of the 43 surviving adobes within Los Angeles County, California. The Adobe was the seat of the 25,000-acre (100 km2) Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela, a Mexican Alta California-era land grant partitioned from the Spanish Las Californias era Rancho Sausal Redondo centered around the Centinela Springs.
Bixby Knolls is a neighborhood in Long Beach, California, named after the Bixby family.
Rancho de los Palos Verdes was a 31,629-acre (128.00 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to José Loreto and Juan Capistrano Sepulveda. The name means "range of green trees". The grant encompassed the present-day cities of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, as well as portions of San Pedro and Torrance.
California Heights is a historic neighborhood of Long Beach, California.
Rancho Los Alamitos takes its name from an 1834 Mexican partition of the 1784 Rancho Los Nietos, a Spanish concession, covering an area in present-day California's southwestern Los Angeles County and northwestern Orange County. Los Alamitos means the Little Cottonwoods or Poplars in Spanish, after the native Fremont Cottonwood trees there.
Los Cerritos is a neighborhood with approximately 700 homes and 2,000 residents located within the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach, California. Established in 1906, the Los Cerritos neighborhood has been used by the film industry of Hollywood with its historic, estate-sized homes. It was one of three finalists in the 2007 Neighborhood of the Year national competition.
The Ygnacio Palomares Adobe, also known as Adobe de Palomares, is a one-story adobe brick structure in Pomona, California, built between 1850 and 1855 as a residence for Don Ygnacio Palomares. It was abandoned in the 1880s and was left to the elements until it was acquired by the City of Pomona in the 1930s. In 1939, the adobe was restored in a joint project of the City of Pomona, the Historical Society of Pomona Valley and the Works Project Administration. Since 1940, it has been open to the public as a museum on life in the Spanish and Mexican ranchos. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Of the more than 400 sites in Los Angeles County that have been listed on the National Register, fewer than ten received the distinction prior to the Ygnacio Palomares Adobe.
La Casa Alvarado, also known as the Alvarado Adobe, is a historic adobe structure built in 1840 and located on Old Settlers Lane in Pomona, California. It was declared a historic landmark in 1954 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
Don Juan Temple was a Californian ranchero and merchant. Born in Massachusetts, he emigrated to Alta California in 1827, becoming a Mexican citizen, adopting the Spanish language and a Spanish name, and eventually marrying into a prominent Californio family. After acquiring Rancho Los Cerritos in 1843, he became one of the largest landowners in Los Angeles County.
Rancho Los Cerritos was a 27,054-acre (109.48 km2) 1834 land grant in present-day southern Los Angeles County and Orange County, California The grant was the result of a partition of the Rancho Los Nietos grant. "Cerritos" means "little hills" in Spanish. The rancho lands include the present-day cities of Cerritos and Long Beach.
The Bixby family is an American family that was heavily involved in the development of California ranches and real estate in the 19th and 20th centuries. Through various companies, they controlled at one time or another large swathes of California real estate, much of it derived from Mexican land grants. Over several generations, their holdings included Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos, and parts of Rancho San Justo and Rancho Palos Verdes, totaling well over 100,000 acres. Parts of the towns of Long Beach, Bellflower, Paramount, Signal Hill, Lakewood, and Los Alamitos emerged from former Bixby-held lands. Within Long Beach, the neighborhoods Bixby Hill, Bixby Knolls, and Bixby Village are named after the family, as well as Bixby Park in the Alamitos Beach neighborhood.
Sarah Bixby Smith (1871–1935) was a California writer and an advocate of women's education. Adobe Days, her memoir of growing up in southern California, is considered a classic of the genre.
The Bixby land companies were a group of California-based land companies founded by various members of the Bixby and Flint families from Maine. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the firms of Flint, Bixby & Company, J. Bixby & Company, J. W. Bixby & Company, the Alamitos Land Company, and the Bixby Land Company controlled large swathes of California real estate, much of it derived from Mexican land grants. At various times their holdings included Rancho Los Cerritos, Rancho Los Alamitos, half of Rancho San Justo, and part of Rancho Palos Verdes together with other property in San Benito, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles counties. Parts of the towns of Long Beach, Bellflower, Paramount, Signal Hill, Lakewood, and Los Alamitos emerged from former Bixby-held lands.
Fanny Weston Bixby Spencer, also referred to as Fanny Bixby was an American philanthropist and antiwar writer. She joined the fledgling Long Beach police force in January 1908, making her one of the country's earliest policewomen.
The Casa de Rancho San Antonio, also known as the Gage Mansion, is the oldest remaining house in Los Angeles County. Construction began in 1795 by Antonio María Lugo, a prominent Californio ranchero. Today, the California Historic Landmark is located within the city of Bell Gardens, California.
Willmore is a neighborhood in Long Beach, California. It is adjacent to Downtown Long Beach.
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(help) and Accompanying 7 photos, exterior, from 1968. (952 KB)