El Segundo ( , ; ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located on Santa Monica Bay, it was incorporated on January 18, 1917, and is part of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments. The population was 17,272 as of the 2020 census, a 3.7% increase from 16,654 in the 2010 census. A significant center of the oil and aerospace industries in Southern California, roughly three quarters of the city's land is dedicated exclusively to industrial and commercial uses, including a Chevron oil refinery which takes up more than a quarter of the city.
History
The Tongva (or Gabrieleños) Native American tribes inhabited the area of El Segundo and the Los Angeles coastal area when the Spanish arrived. The area was once a part of Rancho Sausal Redondo ("Round Willow Patch Ranch"). Rancho Sausal Redondo extended from Playa Del Rey in the north to Redondo Beach in the south. Originally a Mexican land grant owned by Antonio Ygnacio Avila, the rancho was later purchased by a Scottish baronet named Sir Robert Burnett in 1860. After his return to Scotland in 1873, the property was purchased by the then-manager of the rancho, Daniel Freeman. Freeman sold portions of the rancho to several persons. George H. Peck owned the of land where the Chevron Refinery now sits. The city acquired its name ("the second" in Spanish) due to being the second Standard Oil refinery on the West Coast when Standard Oil of California purchased the 840 acres of land in 1911. Peck also developed land in neighboring El Porto, where a street still bears his name.
The city was incorporated in 1917. The Standard Oil Company was renamed Chevron in 1984. The El Segundo refinery entered its second century of operation in 2011.
The Douglas Aircraft Company plant in El Segundo was one of the major aircraft manufacturing facilities in California during World War II. It was one of the major producers of SBD Dauntless dive bombers, which achieved fame in the Battle of Midway. The facility, now operated by Northrop Grumman, is still an aircraft plant.
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File:StandardOil1920.jpg|El Segundo and Standard Oil Refinery,
File:Douglas Aircraft Factory - El Segundo.PNG|SBD Dauntless dive bombers being built by Douglas Aircraft Factory in El Segundo during World War II
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In 2009, a pair of local artists discovered the Smoky Hollow area, which mainly consisted of commercial properties. Other artists started to migrate as they had been priced out of Venice Beach and Culver City. Not long after, the tech industry also discovered Smoky Hollow.
On the evening of October 2, 2025, an explosion occurred and a fire erupted at the Chevron refinery, which produces 276,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
Geography
The northern and southern boundaries of the town are Los Angeles International Airport and Manhattan Beach, with the Pacific Ocean as the western boundary. Its eastern boundary is roughly marked by Aviation Blvd.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a land area of .
The beachfront area neighboring the refinery was once dominated by industrial wharves servicing oil tanker ships, and heavily polluted by sewage and stormwater runoff. The major expansion of the Hyperion wastewater treatment plant in the 1980s was the impetus for rehabilitation of the beach. The old piers were demolished, an underwater oil terminal was constructed a few miles offshore, and an enormous amount of dredged sand was used to restore and dramatically enlarge the once narrow and polluted beach. The Marvin Braude Bike Trail runs along this new artificial beach, as the refinery wharves were one of the last remaining industrial facilities directly obstructing the shoreline of the Santa Monica Bay.