Why “Farm Lot 59”?

The name “Farm Lot 59” makes a direct reference to Long Beach’s early agricultural past. In 1881, William Willmore made an agreement with J. Bixby & Co. to develop the American Colony, a 4,000-acre piece of the Rancho Los Cerritos. With a 350-acre town site called Willmore City that would later become downtown Long Beach, the rest of the American Colony was made up of 20-acre farm lots. The farm lots were numbered 1 through 185. Willmore City and the American Colony were renamed Long Beach in 1884, but the farm lots remained until rapid urbanization subdivided them into home lots after the Pacific Electric Railway came to Long Beach in 1902. Because of its topography and role in the City’s municipal water infrastructure, Farm Lot 59 was never developed into a farm or homes and remains owned by the City of Long Beach to this day. A unique remainder of the American Colony, a portion of Farm Lot 59 has the potential to become the start of a new chapter in Long Beach's agricultural history, as a 21st Century Urban Farm.