Los Alamitos (; ) is a city in Orange County, California, United States. It was incorporated in March 1960. Its population was 11,780 in the 2020 census, up from 11,449 in 2010. A significant part of the city is occupied by Joint Forces Training BaseLos Alamitos, and it hosts the USA Water Polo National Aquatic Center.
History
The Tongva inhabited the area before the city was established, and Rancho Los Alamitos was known as the village of Puvunga. The area is still sacred to the Tongva people.
thumb|alt=Large, low buildings, seen from a distance|[[Sugar beet plant built by William A. Clark, near present-day Katella Avenue and Los Alamitos Boulevard, ]]
The town of Los Alamitos was established in 1896 by Lewellyn Bixby to support a new sugar-beet factory built by the Clark brothers. William Andrews Clark, a future Senator from Montana, had built his fortune in mining, banking and logging in that state. His younger brother, J. Ross Clark, managed their operations in California after he moved there for health reasons. Lewellyn Bixby, whose family owned the surrounding land on Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos, had been trying to build a sugar beet factory in that area for several years. Due to financial losses during the 1880s, he no longer had the money to build the factory complex on his own. Bixby had made a fortune in the 1850s when he and cousins Benjamin and Thomas Flint formed Flint, Bixby & Co. to deal in mutton and wool on Rancho San Justo, south of San Jose. After selling wool to the government during the Civil War, the Flints and Bixby bought land in southern California; this included the future Irvine Ranch and Rancho Los Cerritos, which is much of the western half of Long Beach. Flint, Bixby hired Lewellyn's younger brother, Jotham, to manage the Cerritos. When the company broke up, Lewellyn assumed their southern California properties, moved to Los Angeles and became the senior partner with Jotham.
Around 1881, cousin John W. Bixby wanted to purchase Rancho Los Alamitos with a consortium which included Lewellyn and Jotham and banker Isaias W. Hellman. When John died on May 7, 1887, the ranch was divided among the three families. The northern third, adjacent to the Rancho Los Cerritos (roughly north of present-day Orangewood Avenue), went to the Lewellyn-Jotham faction and became the Bixby Land Company. By the mid-1890s, after the crash following the 1880s land boom, this group was cash-poor and land-rich. After experimenting in northern California with sugar beets, the Bixbys agreed to provide the land and contracted with William A. Clark for capital; E.A. Dyer provided the expertise to build a sugar-beet factory. The community that grew up around the factory complex, with streets of company houses for workers and surrounding farms, was called Los Alamitos. During the early 1900s, sugar beets were delivered to a factory by horse and wagon. Economics, the elimination of a protective tariff, and a 1921 insect infestation reduced the sugar-beet crop in Orange County and ended the industry there and in Los Alamitos. William Clark and his brother H. Ross, who ran the Los Alamitos operation, received east of the factory and purchased north of the factory (primarily in Rancho Los Cerritos) which became Long Beach Airport, Long Beach City College, and the city of Lakewood. Clark and Hellman were also involved with E. H. Harriman, Henry Edwards Huntington, and the Southern Pacific Railroad in southern California; the Clarks completed a railroad from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, with a desert stop in Las Vegas.
thumb|alt=Exterior of a mission-style building with a palm tree in front|St. Isidore Historic Plaza, built in 1921
On land south of the factory (and present-day Orangewood Avenue), John Bixby's son Fred had a ranch to fatten cattle for slaughter and managed Hellman's land in present-day Seal Beach). Bixby allowed European-immigrant, Mexican, and Japanese farmers to rent land and grow crops. At the beginning of World War II, the Japanese farmers were rounded up by the military and relocated to internment camps in Manzanar and elsewhere.
Before and early in the war, the area around Los Alamitos became a center of the aircraft industry. The Clark heirs arranged for Donald Douglas to begin construction of the Douglas Aircraft Company plant north of the Long Beach airport, and the Navy needed an auxiliary airfield for its reserve training facility at the airport. A touch-and-go field was built on level ground east of Los Alamitos in August 1940, Orange County's first military post. In February 1941, the Navy moved its reserve aviation training from Long Beach and purchased . Trainees and other troops began using the new facilities in November of that year, and Naval Reserve Air Base Long Beach moved its operations to NRAB Los Alamitos in May 1942. NRAB Los Alamitos was the nation's busiest reserve air base during the Korean War, but suburban residential development began to curtail its activity by the late 1950s. The Navy moved out in 1972, and the California National Guard took over management of the base as an Armed Forces Reserve Center the following year. It is a reserve support center for units of the Army, Navy, National Guard and Marines and home to other government agencies, including Homeland Security, FEMA and the State of California Office of Emergency Services.
Former military personnel remained in Los Alamitos after the war, living in neighborhoods such as Carrier Row (whose streets are named for World War II aircraft carriers,. Carrier Row was three small subdivisions, built in 1947–48, 1950, and 1955 by different builders. The first subdivision was Alamos Ranchos, first occupied in April 1948. The homes had sewage problems, and the builder stopped after completing the two blocks east of Lexington and south of Katella. In 1950, two more blocks were constructed as Plainview Homes. In 1955, the tract was completed with the construction of Los Alamitos Park. Los Alamitos Terrace, a 193-unit subdivision, was built north of Old Town West on a Bixby-operated dairy farm whose headquarters was present-day Los Alamitos High School. The city shares a northwestern border with Long Beach's El Dorado Park neighborhood. Coyote Creek separates Los Alamitos from Long Beach.
<span class="anchor" id="Biogeography"></span>Flora
The most common native plant species are hairy sand verbena, red sand verbena, and pink sand verbena.
Climate
Los Alamitos' USDA hardiness zone is 9, and its Sunset climate zone is 22.