Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site

An Indigenous labourer built this adobe for Jonathan Temple in 1844, and Temple ran as many as fifteen thousand head off it into the hide and tallow trade. Flood and then drought in the early 1860s killed tens of thousands of his cattle and finished rancho California; he sold out in 1866 for twenty thousand dollars. Flint, Bixby and Company put sheep on instead, as many as thirty thousand, shorn twice a year. That trade failed too by the late 1870s, and Jotham Bixby began selling off the ground Long Beach now stands on.

What the plaque says

The 27,000-acre Rancho was once part of an 18th-century Spanish land grant to soldier Manuel Nieto. The Monterey-style adobe was constructed in 1844 and served the Temple and Bixby families as headquarters for large-scale cattle and sheep ranching operations in the 19th century. In the 1880s the land was subdivided for farming and city development.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 18 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.
• Santa Monica Pier — 21 mi
  Where the Mother Road runs out of continent, and where the End of the Trail sign gives the drive somewhere to finish.
• Colorado Street Bridge — 21 mi
  Beaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.

More markers nearby

• Domínguez Ranchhouse — 2.3 mi
• Heritage House — 4.0 mi
• Banning Park — 5.0 mi
• Drum Barracks — 5.2 mi