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As a result of meritorious service, Corporal Manuel Nieto (1734–1804) received an incredible, 167,000-acre land grant from his former military commander, Spanish governor of Mexico, Pedro Fages Beleta (1734-1794, known as Pere Fages i Beleta in the Catalan language) in 1784. This gigantic agricultural estate was known as Rancho Los Nietos, and was sub-divided after Manuel's death into five smaller properties, of which one was 85,000-acre Rancho Los Alamitos, named for the little cottonwood trees growing on the land. The Mexican Governor, General José Figueroa (1792-1835) made official the sub-division into five parcels in 1834. The land remained in the Nieto Family until MA-born Abel Stearns (1798-1871) purchased the estate in 1844. During the 1840 and 1850s, Stearns operated a successful cattle ranch on his property, the fortunes of which declined following the floods and droughts of the early 1860s, destroying grazing plants for cows. MA-born businessman John W. Bixby (1848-1887), together with his cousins, Llewellyn (1825-1896) and Jotham Bixby (1831-1917), and the banker Isaias W. Hellman (1842-1920), purchased Rancho Los Alamitos in 1881; John Bixby had leased the Rancho Los Alamitos since 1878. The Bixby Family owned a great deal of land in both Northern and Southern CA, on which it raised large herds of wool-bearing sheep. Senator William Andrews Clark, Sr., (1839-1925) a MT copper tycoon, purchased 8,000 acres of Rancho Los Alamitos land in 1896, on which he farmed sugar beets and, slightly later in 1899, erected a huge sugar beet processing plant and a surrounding company town. Infestation of the sugar beet crops killed the sugar beet industry at this location by 1921. The US Naval Air Station moved to Clark's company town of Los Alamitos during World War II, and the military has continued to occupy a portion of the long-forgotten Rancho Los Alamitos. The City of Los Alamitos incorporated in 1960.

This sprawling agricultural estate covered a roughly equivalent chunk of southeast Los Angeles and northwest Orange County territory. Los Angeles County cities within the Los Alamitos Rancho were the eastern part of present day Long Beach, Whittier, and Norwalk; Orange County cities located at least in part within its boundaries included Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Banch, Los Alamitos, Cypress, La Palma, Stanton and Garden Grove.

PCAD id: 1917