Rise and Fall of America's Greatest Navy Town: Long Beach

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store Long Beach was once the home port of the United States Pacific Fleet. For seventy-five years, battleships and aircraft carriers anchored in the harbor, and thirty thousand sailors came ashore to a waterfront amusement zone called the Pike, where the Cyclone Racer — the most famous wooden roller coaster on the West Coast — screamed over the water on pilings. Signal Hill oil made the city rich. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake nearly destroyed it, and five thousand Navy sailors rescued it. Then the Navy built a 2.5-mile breakwater that killed the surf forever, the city bought the Queen Mary with tidelands oil money and tore down the Cyclone Racer to build a road to it, the Pike closed, the Naval Station shut down, the shipyard followed — and the Queen Mary almost sank at her own berth. Long Beach never shrank. Its port set a cargo record in 2025. But the Navy town, the resort town, the liberty town with the waves and the lights and the roller coaster — that place is gone. This is the story of what happened to it. Sources: Harvey Beigel, Battleship Country: The Battle Fleet at San Pedro–Long Beach, California, 1919–1940 Naval History and Heritage Command, “San Pedro” base history (history.navy.mil) BRAC Program Management Office, “Former Long Beach Naval Complex — Base Summary” (bracpmo.navy.mil) Long Beach Post News, Peninsula and Hurricane Marie coverage, September 2026 (lbpost.com) Surfrider Foundation Long Beach Chapter, “Long Beach Break Water” history and campaign records (longbeach.surfrider.org) City of Long Beach, “Peninsula Update — Hurricane Marie Response and Next Steps,” memorandum to City Manager, September 25, 2026 (longbeach.gov)