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History goes better with pizza. Better yet: A walk through history itself, building up your pizza appetite. Both pleasures were mine during a holiday stay down in Long Beach, which holds its history in some fine old houses — and its pizza in a hip new enclave of converted steel shipping containers.
What’s now known as the city’s Bixby Knolls neighborhood was first populated thousands of years ago, as indicated by Native American artifacts left by various tribes from long ago. Plunging forward centuries, the territory fell under Spanish rule and was later sliced by those rulers into the 27,000-acre portion of a larger land grant, the Rancho Los Cerritos, in 1834.
That takes us from more bookish history to a trail you can walk with your own two feet: the lovely restored grounds of the Rancho Los Cerritos adobe, a big and beautiful Monterey-style home built with an impressive formal garden in 1844. Some of the stately trees from that original garden are still alive, and the chronicles housed in the adobe — including its 3,000-volume California History Research Library, its displays of archival materials from prehistoric times through 1955 and its period-furnished exhibit rooms — are quite lively too.
The property was a cattle ranch for years, before Jotham Bixby, known as the “father of Long Beach,” purchased the property for himself. He raised seven children at the adobe, as well as 30,000 sheep on its grounds. This historic home was owned by the Bixby family for several generations. Raise enough children and sheep at the right time, and your town’s streets and neighborhoods might be named after you and your family, too.
Check out the Rancho’s museum shop, note its events and workshops calendar for future brain extension, stroll through the garden grounds and inhale the sweet floral scents. And then keep strolling, because you’re on the edge of one of Long Beach’s fine old neighborhoods, and walking the wide, tree-lined boulevards past a wonderfully mixed set of mini-estates is a refreshing tonic of architectural styles and lavish landscaping.
The neighborhood properties date from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s all the way to some more modern treatments. Noted architect Kirtland Cutter built a few of these beauties in 1929. And many have been featured in Hollywood productions, including “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “American Pie 2.”
For a self-guided tour, head south out of the Rancho parking lot onto Virginia Road, past the polished golf course of the Virginia Country Club and into the neighborhood on North Virginia Road. What you are going to do is flank the busy bustle of Long Beach Boulevard, your pizza-ish destination, through these shady Los Cerritos lanes, which hold many striking houses of note. However, if your belly loudly cries for the laden table, you can stay on Virginia until it hits Long Beach Boulevard, and travel another block or so south to Bixby Road.
But you’ll miss a lot of these bountiful homes. Stretch your legs and your eyes a bit more by doubling back from Virginia to Locust or Pine Avenues, or onto Weston Place, and drink in some of the refinements of old architecture in a pleasant setting. Then you’re ready to hit that big old boulevard, which is part of Long Beach’s Uptown Renaissance.
And what says Renaissance more than a shipping container? A concentrated bunch of shipping containers, that is. Scoff you might, but repurposed shipping containers are now spiffy homes, hotels, poolside cabanas and more. SteelCraft, a company specializing in placing small “villages” of craft food and drink vendors in urban areas, has built a friendly example in Long Beach, and it’s thriving.
Among the brightly painted containers are vendors for craft beer, waffles, ramen, coffee — and pizza, thank the urban eatery gods. The inner courtyard of community tables is lively with folks, food and drink. There is occasional live music and other events, the Wi-Fi streams along, and the vibe is vivacious.
I had a Neapolitan-style pizza at DeSano, and it was cheesy goodness. The broccoli battled the sausage for dominance, but I won. A cold IPA from Smog City Brewing soothed any jealousy I had about not owning a 1936 Spanish Revival manor with a backyard that has its own zip code.
But a spruced-up shipping container? I might look into that.
If You Go
Rancho Los Cerritos: Open from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. Free admission. 4600 Virginia Road, Long Beach; www.rancholoscerritos.org.
SteelCraft Long Beach: Constructed from shipping containers, this village of urban eateries is open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, but Individual vendor hours may vary. The DeSano Pizzeria is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. or later daily. 3768 Long Beach Blvd. Long Beach; www.steelcraftlb.com, www.desanopizza.com