Alcohol Testing in Seal Beach CA

Local Area Info Seal Beach, California

Seal Beach is located in the westernmost corner of Orange County. To the northwest, just across the border with Los Angeles County, lies the city of Long Beach and the adjacent San Pedro Bay. To the southeast are Huntington Harbour, a neighborhood of Huntington Beach, and Sunset Beach, also part of Huntington Beach. To the east lie the city of Westminster and the neighborhood of West Garden Grove, part of the city of Garden Grove. To the north lie the unincorporated community of Rossmoor and the city of Los Alamitos. A majority of the city’s acreage is devoted to the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach military base.

Beginning in the mid-1860s, the eastern area of what is now Old Town Seal Beach became known as “Anaheim Landing.” A warehouse and wharf had been built on a small bay where Anaheim Creek emptied into the Pacific Ocean. It was established by farmers and merchants in the newly-settled town of Anaheim who wanted a closer, more convenient port to ship the wine they were growing and also to receive items they needed to help build homes and buildings in their new town. For a few years Anaheim Landing came close to rivaling San Pedro for its volume of shipping, but the arrival of the railroad in Anaheim in 1875 made it easier to ship product via the rails than by hauling a wagon overland across 12 miles of soft soil to the Landing. However, the beaches and surrounding rolling Anaheim Landing had by this time also become popular as a getaway from hot summer days. Los Angeles newspapers talk of a permanent summer population of as many as 400 and even more on special days. Throughout the year, the landing was also home to a number of fishing boats that plied the local fishing areas. This activity was written about by Nobel-prize winning author Henryk Sienkiewicz in a short essay, “The Cranes.” The site of Anaheim Landing is now registered as a California Historical Landmark.

In 1903 Los Angeles realtor Philip A. Stanton, very familiar with the area from his time selling land in Anaheim, and Huntington Beach and also from representing the local real estate interests of banker and Pacific Electric Railroad co-owner, put together a syndicate to lay out the town of Bayside on the land between Anaheim Landing and Anaheim Bay and the eastern edge of Alamitos Bay. The new town would be along the still not-announced leg of the Pacific Electric which would run from Long Beach to Newport Beach. As there was already a town called Bayside in Northern California by Eureka Stanton’s group instead called their new town Bay City. Unfortunately, due to many factors — including competition from other beach resort areas Long Beach, Redondo Beach and VeniceOcean ParkSanta Monica, some national financial crises, and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake which sent most investment dollars to the more lucrative rebuilding of San Francisco — Bay City failed miserably as a real estate investment. In 1913, Stanton optioned the land to real estate promoter Guy M. Rush who invested in building a renovated pier with pavilions on either side. Rush also re-branded the town as Seal Beach and marketed it via postcards and advertisements around the country. Unfortunately, this too failed and by early 1915 Rush had let his options lapse. In 1915 Stanton tried again, arranging to obtain some amusements from the closing San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition and rebuild them as part of new amusement area which would be called The Joy Zone. As part of this plan, the Bayside Land Company led a campaign to incorporate the town October 27, 1915 and then had the new city council approve legal drinking in the town. This made it different from the Pike at Long Beach which was a “dry city.” The Joy Zone, a beach-side amusement park built in 1916, was the first in Orange County. It achieved some brief popularity, but the US entry into World War II and the resulting restrictions on rubber and metal dramatically impacted the amusement area.