Food for Thought, Part I: Rossmoor Center

This is the first in a series of posts about all the places to eat around here over the years.     The development of the Rossmoor Shopping center is an interesting story, but too long to deal with here, so look here instead.        The original, very ambitious plans for the Rossmoor Center were … Read more

1853 – October – Diary of Dr. Thomas Flint

The Bixbys are a legendary name in the history of Long Beach and the Rancho Los Alamitos, and deservedly so.  The true start of the family fortune goes back to the early 1850s when cousins Benjamin and Thomas Flint and Lewellyn Bixby returned home to Maine from Gold Rush California, where they had some success … Read more

1853 – Sept. – Diary of Dr. Thomas Flint

The Bixbys are a legendary name in the history of Long Beach and the Rancho Los Alamitos, and deservedly so.  The true start of the family fortune goes back to the early 1850s when cousins Benjamin and Thomas Flint and Lewellyn Bixby returned home to Maine from Gold Rush California, where they had some success … Read more

1853 – June – Diary of Dr. Thomas Flint

The Bixbys are a legendary name in the history of Long Beach and the Rancho Los Alamitos, and deservedly so.  The true start of the family fortune goes back to the early 1850s when cousins Benjamin and Thomas Flint and Lewellyn Bixby returned home to Maine from Gold Rush California, where they had some success … Read more

1896 – USGS map showing Los Alamitos area as it was

To the left is a late 1896 USGS map showing the lower portion of “the Downey” quadrangle, the upper portion of the Bolsa quadrangle and the west portion of the Anaheim quadrangle, but mainly focusing on Rancho Los Alamitos and the surrounding area. The sugar factory would be constructed later that year but the early … Read more

1860’s: Flint, Bixby & Co buy Irvine & Los Cerritos ranchos, will become largest landowners in the state,

The most prominent family in the growth and development of the Long Beach and West Orange County area were the Bixbys.  The family’s “patriarch” of sorts was Lewellyn Bixby who first came to California in 1850 for the Gold Rush but soon joined with his cousins Thomas and Benjamin Flint to switch to mercantilism and … Read more

Biography: Frank Capitain, architect of the Los Alamitos Sugar Factory & town

18 JUN 1897 – Land of Sunshine: A Magazine of California and the Southwest. p42- One of the busiest men and the same time the pleasantest in all Southern California is Frank J. Capitain of the Alamitos Land Co., which together with the Alamitos Sugar Co. has within twelve months laid out the town of … Read more