Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Willmore City goes broke and is renamed Long Beach
1884
Long Beach, California
William Erwin Willmore, an English schoolmaster turned land agent, leased about 4,000 acres of Jotham Bixby's Rancho Los Cerritos in 1881 and laid out a townsite he called Willmore City, marketing the lots as the American Colony at fifty to a hundred dollars an acre. Buyers did not come in the numbers he needed. By 1884 he had given up the lease, the rancho took the land back for non-payment and sold it on to the Long Beach Land and Water Company, which renamed the place after its beach. The founder died broke in 1901. The grid he drew is still there, now the Willmore City historic district on the edge of downtown.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: approximate area
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