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Long Beach (California) is a city in Los Angeles County, southwestern California, on San Pedro Bay. The city is located in a vast metropolitan region centered on Los Angeles. Long Beach is a major shipping, industrial, commercial, and resort center. The Port of Long Beach, adjacent to Los Angeles Harbor, is one of the nation's largest container ports. Extensive oil and natural gas fields lie under the city and extend offshore under the waters of the bay. The economic activities of the city are varied, and include the aerospace industry; oil extraction and related industries; high-technology industries, especially those in the field of satellite communications technology; and health care systems. The city is served by Long Beach Airport.
Long Beach is home to California State University-Long Beach (1949), a community college, and the newly-expanded Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center. The retired ocean liner Queen Mary, docked in the city's harbor, is a hotel and major tourist attraction. Also of interest in the city are the Long Beach Museum of Art, housed in a 1912 mansion; the El Dorado Nature Center; and Rancho Los Alamitos and Rancho Los Cerritos, 19th-century adobe ranch houses. The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach is an annual event.
The community was laid out in 1882 as Willmore City by developer William Willmore. The city's name was changed to Long Beach in 1888, the same year it incorporated. The name Long Beach was chosen to reflect the city's development as a beach community. Long Beach grew with the opening of the port in 1911 and the discovery nearby of oil in 1921. A 1933 earthquake caused much damage, but the city rebuilt and expanded once again with the establishment of aircraft industries in the early 1940s. In the mid-1970s Long Beach began a redevelopment program projected to be completed by the year 2000. Long Beach Naval Station closed in the early 1990s; a federal commission voted in 1995 to close the naval shipyard as part of a national base-consolidation program. Long Beach has initiated a reuse plan for these sites that is intended to result in job creation and economic revitalization. In the mid-1990s renovation of the waterfront, known as the Queensway Bay Project, began; planned structures include the Aquarium on the Pacific.
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