What royalty or heads of state have graced the West OC/East LB area with their presence? It seems to not be a very long list.
In 1915 former US President William Howard Taft repaid a political favor to Phillip A. Stanton (who as speaker of the California Assembly in 1909 derailed some anti-Japanese legislation that then President Taft felt would have bad results) by visiting Stanton’s Seal Beach development during the campaign to incorporate the town.
A few years after that future President Richard Nixon and his family came down from Whittier (or Yorba Linda) to visit the city for a day of bathing, recounting in one book of memories of how silly a cousin from the midwest looked in one of the rented bathing suits.
In July 1926 Crown Prince Gustavus Adolphus and Crown Princess Louis enjoyed a lunch at the Bolsa Chica Gun Club, followed that up witha short visit to the local oil fields and then headed up to Los Angeles via Westminster, Los Alamitos and Norwalk.
In July 1938, FDR became the first (and only?) sitting President to visit Seal Beach during a motorcade that took him from downtown LA to downtown Long Beach and then down the Coast Highway across the San Gabriel River into Seal Beach and then down to San Diego where he would board his yacht for a Presidential vacation.
The next year, Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie hit the campaign trail in the OC. After delivering a whistlestop speech in Santa Ana, a motorcade carried him west over 17th Ave/Westminster Blvd then through Seal Beach where he shook the hand of four-year Dave Privett in front of their home around 17th and the Coast Highway.
In 1962 former Veep (and then California Gubernatorial candidate) Richard Nixon visited the new Leisure World community (shown left with Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Brockman, owner of Brock’s Drugs). The Leisure World visit was duplicated in 1968 by Democratic Presidential candidate (and sitting Vice-President) Hubert Humphrey.
During his Presidency Bill Clinton arrived as a passenger aboard Air Force One many times at the Los Alamitos Air base, and in November 1994 even stayed there awhile delivering a speech.
Future astronaut/Ohio Senator/and Presidential candidate John Glenn flew out of the Los Alamitos Air Base — even setting a world’s record in a transcontinental flight in 1957.
Another person of royal stature who spent some time in Los Alamitos was Baseball’s King of Clout — Babe Ruth himself — who in January 1927, took a day off from his vaudeville appearances in Long Beach to enjoy a day of duck hunting at the Farmer’s Gun Club just east of Sugar Factor in the swamp by Moody, just south of Ball (current Cypress now, but historically since it was on Rancho Los Alamitos lands, it was considered Los Alamitos then.). This trip was not to be confused with one a year later when Ruth and teammate Lou Gehrig, who were heading up a barnstorming tour of teams, took a day off to shoot at the Bolsa Chica Gun Club.