Long Beach

Long Beach, city, California, United States. With a large port (connected by channel with Los Angeles Harbor), many oil wells (some offshore, concealed on landscaped floating islands), and a long, wide beach (after which the city is named), this is a major shipping, industrial, and resort centre. Aircraft, ships, petroleum products, chemicals, fabricated metal, and electronic equipment are manufactured there, and it is the seat of California State University-Long Beach (1948). Of interest in the city are the Long Beach Museum of Art and an early 19th-century adobe ranch house. The street plan of the community, laid out in the early 1880s, grew with the opening of the port in 1909, the discovery of nearby oil in 1921, and the establishment of aircraft industries in the early 1940s. Population (1980) 361,334; (1990) 429,433.