30 SEP 1956 — 3 FLYERS DIE IN CRASH. — a twin-engine Navy anti-submarine plane from VS 772 crashed into a sugar beet field shortly after taking off from the NAS Los Alamitos at 10:30am Saturday. The three men in its crew were killed instantly. The plane was a Grumman S2F Sentinel radio training mission. Killed … Read more
From the March 9, 1956 Enterprise, p. 4, col. 4 Mr. and Mrs. J.R. Watts, 10931 Chestnut, will quietly observe their sixtieth wedding anniversary here Sunday. They are among the oldest residents of Los Alamitos, having moved here in 1911[ref] It’s possible they followed a relative to the town. One Joseph R. Watts was listed … Read more
Beginning in 1953 incorporation and annexation fever were sweeping west Orange County. Anaheim was moving west down Lincoln and Katella Avenues. Buena Park formed in 1953 and it was trying to grab industrial area to its west to use as a tax base. Garden Grove was also snaking its way west along Lampson and Garden … Read more
From the Thursday January 13, 1956 issue of the Los Alamitos-Cypress Enterprise. Page 1, col 1. (bottom left corner) Los Alamitos Civic Leader passes Away after Long Siege of Cancer LOS ALAMITOS— One of Los Alamitos’ most active civic leaders, Paul (Bob) Robinson, passed away Sunday in Seaside Hospital, following several months of suffering from … Read more
The Enterprise, Thursday, February 12, 1954, page 7 Mrs. Oscar Watte was elected president for the coming term of the Altar Society of St. Isadore’s Catholic Church of Los Alamitos. She will be assisted by Mrs. Camille Pattyn, who was chosen vice-president; and Mrs. Bruce Baker will be secretary and publicity chairman. Mrs. Ray … Read more
I have heard many stories abut the Youth Center’s beginnings in the Los Alamitos area, but never a definitive, documentable explanation. And I suspect, as often happens with institutional histories, many innocent errors have morphed into “truths.” So the point of this article is to try to begin a process to document the real origins … Read more
While not officially incorporated as a city until 1960, Los Alamitos has had a very definite presence since it was first laid out as a sugar factory town in 1896. An early 1897 LA Times article listed the new community as one of the top three towns in Orange County — along with Anaheim and … Read more
The June 11 entry in Chris Jepsen’s OC Historical Roundup blog features one of the classic photos of early Los Alamitos, most likely taken in the late 19 teens or early 1920s. I believe this originally comes from the First American OC History photo archives. You can see why the small western town of Los … Read more
This article was originally published in the Anaheim Historical Society’s January 2010 newsletter. I have been in touch with the author and we have shared much information on Ross Cortese, who developed and built four very distinctive tracts of single-family residential homes, before going on to even more success as the developer of the Leisure … Read more
A valuable tool for any history buff are the the Sanborn Maps. Originally created to assess fire insurance liability in urbanized areas in the United States, the maps are now seen by historians, genealogists, sociologists, preservationists and even city planners as a valuable guide to tracking the growth of a town, state or country. The … Read more