Los Angeles Relocation Guide - Antevia

Tourists are also drawn to Long Beach by the numerous annual events held in the city,which include music festivals, sports competitions, and cultural celebrations.The Long Beach Grand Prix, an annual Champ Car race, takes place on city streets nearthe Convention Center and is one of the largest Grand Prix events in the world. It is thelargest street race in the United States with an estimated 300,000 people watching theevent in person every year over three days.Long Beach is the location of the largest California State University, CSULB, and theheadquarters of the California State University system. The city also has a VeteransAffairs hospital and is a major healthcare hub for the region.Signal Hill is an incorporated city surrounded entirely by Long Beach.HistoryThe area was originally occupied by the Tongva people who lived in a rancheria namedTibahangna. Along with other Tongva villages, it disappeared in the mid-1800s.The Rancho los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos were divided from the larger RanchoLos Nietos, which had been granted by the King of Spain to a mulatto soldier, ManuelNieto. The boundary between the two ranchos ran through the center of Signal Hill at asouthwest to northeast diagonal.Rancho Los Cerritos was bought in 1843 by John Temple, a Yankee who had come toCalifornia in 1827. Soon after he built what is now known as the "Los Cerritos RanchHouse," an adobe which still stands and is a National Historic Landmark. Temple createda thriving cattle ranch and prospered, becoming the wealthiest man in Los AngelesCounty. Both Temple and his ranch house played important local roles in the MexicanAmerican War.Meanwhile, on an island in the San Pedro Bay, Mormon pioneers made an abortiveattempt to establish a colony (as part of Brigham Young's plan to establish a continuouschain of settlements from the Pacific to Salt Lake).In 1866 Temple sold Rancho Los Cerritos to the firm of Flint, Bixby & Co, whichconsisted of brothers Thomas and Benjamin Flint and their cousin Lewellyn Bixby, for$20,000. Later that year the company selected Lewellyn's brother Jotham Bixby, the"Father of Long Beach", to manage their southern ranch, and three years later Jothambought into the property and would later form the Bixby Land Company. It was duringthis period that the Rancho Los Cerritos was converted to sheep ranching. In the 1870s asmany as 30,000 sheep were kept at the ranch and sheared twice yearly to provide woolfor trade. In 1880, Bixby sold 4,000 acres (16 km²) of the Rancho Los Cerritos toWilliam E. Willmore, who subdivided it in hopes of creating a farm community,Willmore City. He failed and was bought out by the "Long Beach Land and WaterCompany." They changed the name of the community to "Long Beach", which was