Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Foothill Estates Lompoc, CA

Lompoc takes its name from the Purisimeño Chumash word lumpo'o̥, meaning 'lagoon' - the Chumash people inhabited the Lompoc Valley for thousands of years before Spanish colonization.

Lompoc was founded in 1874 as a temperance colony by the Lompoc Valley Land Company and incorporated as a city on August 13, 1888.

Just outside Lompoc stands La Purísima Mission, founded in 1787 by Fermín de Lasuén - it is the most completely restored of all the California missions and is now a State Historic Park; the original mission was destroyed by an 1812 earthquake and the restored mission was rebuilt by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

Lompoc had a population of 44,444 in the 2020 census, making it one of the larger cities on Santa Barbara County's Central Coast.

The 2020 census counted 14,104 households in Lompoc with an average household size of 3.06, and about 57% of residents identified as Hispanic or Latino.

Lompoc is the gateway community to Vandenberg Space Force Base - the city boomed after 1958, when the former Army Camp Cooke became the Air Force's first missile base, the test site for the Thor missiles and first operational base for the Atlas ICBM.

West Coast Space Shuttle launches were planned from Vandenberg in the late 1980s and Lompoc boomed in anticipation, but the program was cancelled after the 1986 Challenger disaster, sending the city into a severe recession.

Lompoc was once known as the flower seed capital of the world - its flower fields produced roughly 70% of the world's flower seeds in 1964 - and its nickname today is the 'City of Arts and Flowers', with around 40 murals painted across its Old Town.

The world's largest marine diatomite mine operates in Miguelito Canyon in Lompoc's southern hills - opened in 1893 and now run by Imerys, it was once the valley's largest employer.

The worst peacetime naval disaster in US history happened off Lompoc's coast - in the 1923 Honda Point disaster, nine US Navy destroyers ran aground, killing 23 sailors.