Built in 1844 by John Temple, one of Los Angeles’s earliest land developers, RLC was at the center of Southern California’s booming trade economy. A cattle ranching headquarters and a catalyst for the development of the San Pedro Bay and Port of Long Beach, RLC’s cultural significance to Southern California spans centuries.
If you’d like to help fund Rancho Los Cerritos’s continued operation, consider making a donation or getting involved.
A series of severe droughts and floods devastated the cattle ranch. In 1866, Rancho Los Cerritos was purchased by Flint, Bixby & Co. to be a sheep ranch, ushering in a new era of water management and innovation. By the twentieth century, the City of Long Beach and surrounding areas had rapidly developed new industries, and RLC had fallen into disrepair. In 1930, forward-thinking Llewellyn Bixby, trained as a Civil Engineer, recognized the importance of restoring and preserving this vital link to our past. Restoration began on the adobe and gardens in 1930.
Today, RLC’s restoration and preservation work continues. The site is a National, State, and Local Historic Landmark with many stories to tell. For 181 years, Rancho Los Cerritos has stood witness to our shared history by inspiring curiosity and respect for our past, enriching our understanding of our present, and creating excitement for our future.
Looking Back to Advance Forward is a project to capture, store, and reuse rainfall on our historic property. This project aims to create an innovative model for stormwater reclamation that can serve as a national model. Our project will use two distinct methods for capturing, storing, and treating stormwater—one that uses new technology and one that uses traditional methods.
Rancho Los Cerritos is implementing the latest technology, enabling us to capture an additional 140,000 Cubic Feet of runoff. This increases our stormwater capture volume from 40% to 95% annually. The majority is absorbed and collected through new permeable paving leading to an underground 22,000-gallon cistern at the site’s entrance. Stormwater captured at the cistern is filtered and treated using ultraviolet sterilization as greywater recapture for the on-site landscape.
In addition, traditional water-capturing techniques utilize gravity to channel rainwater into a natural arroyo at the lowest point of RLC’s property. The water that is channeled to the arroyo is treated through biofiltration.
Thank you to our partners, the Port of Long Beach, San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, for funding this project!
