"In a widely cited (and likely apocryphal) exchange the bewildered conductor cried, 'But there's nothing here!' Alighting the stopped train, one of the Standard Oil men is said to have replied: 'No, but there will be.' Nothing is precisely what they were looking for. They needed a blank space along the coast on which to build a refinery to complement the company's existing facility nearly 400 miles to the north in Richmond."
"In less than a year that notional refinery had been realized. A belching, smoking industrial complex replaced the bulldozed dunes and plowed-under bean fields. Standard Oil named it El Segundo, as it was the second refinery in California."
"The company town to house the refinery's workers was fortuitously built near the future site of Mines Field, L.A.'s first municipal airport. When that opened for flights in 1930, it became a center of activity for the burgeoning aerospace industry."
In 1911, Standard Oil employees identified a vacant coastal area near Redondo Beach as an ideal location for a second California refinery. Within a year, the company constructed a major industrial facility on the site, replacing bean fields and dunes with a refining complex. The company town developed to house refinery workers coincided with the establishment of Mines Field, Los Angeles's first municipal airport, which opened in 1930. This proximity attracted aerospace companies including Hughes Aircraft and Boeing. Despite the Cold War's end and defense industry decline, El Segundo retained major aerospace contractors like Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. Recently, the city has become part of Silicon Beach, hosting video game companies and technology startups.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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