Long Beach (California) is a city in Los Angeles County, southwestern California, in San Pedro Bay. The city is located in a massive metropolitan region centered on Los Angeles. Long Beach is a primary shipping, industrial, commercial, and resort center. The Port of Long Beach, next 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 diverse, and include the aerospace industry; oil extraction along with associated industries; high-technology industries, particularly 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 main tourist attraction. Additionally of great interest around the city include 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 within 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 has been chosen to reflect the city's progression being a beach community. Long Beach expanded with the opening of the port during 1911 and the discovery nearby of oil in 1921. A 1933 earthquake brought on much damage, but the city reconstructed and also expanded once again with the establishment of aircraft industries in the early 1940s. In the mid-1970s Long Beach started a redevelopment program projected to be done 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 meant to lead to job creation and economic revitalization. In the mid-1990s reconstruction of the waterfront, called the Queensway Bay Project, began; planned structures include the Aquarium around the Pacific.
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