When the Bixbys purchased Rancho Los Cerritos and later Rancho Los Alamitos nothing was farther from their thoughts than that they were purchasing the site of the future City of Long Beach but they had the good judgment to hold their land and California, oil and Iowa did the rest.
Four thousand acres of Los Cerritos were sold in 1880 by Jotham Bixby Company to W. E. Willmore, who platted Willmore City, surrounded by the American Colony Tract, composed of farm lots. Tremendous effort was put forth by Mr. Willmore to make his city successful. He advertised all over the country and even ran a special excursion from Chicago with prospective Willmoreans. But the plan was premature and not enough purchasers could be found to buy the city lots at $25.00 to $100.00 each or the farm lots at $15.00 an acre to enable Willmore to meet his agreement with the Bixbys and several years later he abandoned the land to them.
But Willmore had planned well—his streets were wide, 80 and 100 feet being usual, and one, American Avenue, being 124 feet wide, and the natural beauty of the land and ocean frontage made it attractive to others. Soon a syndicate under the name of Long Beach Land & Water Company took up the sale of the lots and Willmore City took the name of Long Beach.
Now the two families of the Bixbys, one from their hacienda, the former home of Don Juan Temple on the Los Cerritos, the other from their hacienda, the former home of Don Abel Stearns on the Los Alamitos, watched Long Beach grow from a subdivision to a city. The Alamitos Tract and the Townsite of Alamitos Bay were platted.
In 1897, William A. Clark, Montana Copper King and builder of the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, purchased 8,139 acres of Rancho Los Cerritos for $405,000. This vast tract, known as the Montana Ranch, has been held practically intact to the present day. Early development, however, is planned for this property by the Janss Investment Company, Los Angeles Realtors, who have announced that they will build a model city on the ranch.
In 1921 the secret of Signal Hill was discovered and an added impetus given the development of the two ranchos. Soon the hill bristled with oil derricks. There being then many owners there soon were many millionaires. Oil flowed so fast from the hill that on several occasions it streamed uncontrolled over lawns and flowers on the slopes of Signal Hill. Daily the value of the oil taken from the hill equalled twice the price the Bixbys paid for both ranchos.
Slowly the oil fields have been extended—northwesterly toward the hacienda of Don Juan Temple and southeasterly toward the hacienda of Don Abel Stearns.
Rancho Aguaje de La Centinela
Traded with two barrels of wine for a small adobe house in the Pueblo of Los Angeles, then in turn owned by a noble Spaniard, an ignoble Frenchman, a famous Confederate General and a Scotch Baronet, then the scene of one of the most spectacular boom subdivisions in the Land Boom of 1886-1888 and finally the site of a prosperous and successful city—such is the history of the Rancho Centinela.
The rancho was granted in 1844 by the “Department of California,” Government of Mexico, to Ignacio Machado by a grant which described the land as “half a league more or less of grazing land.” Machado did not prize his grazing land very highly and the following year traded the property to Bruno Abila for a small adobe house “with vineyard fenced” in the suburbs of the Pueblo of Los Angeles. But in the eyes of these two traders, the small adobe was worth more than the great Rancho Centinela and the deed provided that in addition to the rancho Machado was to give as an added consideration two barrels of aguardiente (wine).