Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Los Alamitos, CA

Los Alamitos is Spanish for "the little cottonwoods," a name inspired by the clusters of cottonwood trees Spanish explorers saw in the area more than 200 years ago.

The land under Los Alamitos was once part of Rancho Los Alamitos, an 85,000-acre grant made in 1784 by Governor Pedro Fages to retired Spanish soldier Manuel Nieto, and the rancho sat on the site of Puvunga, a village sacred to the Tongva people.

The modern town grew out of sugar beets: in 1896 former Montana senator William Clark bought more than 8,000 acres of rancho land, formed the Los Alamitos Sugar Company, and built a factory townsite of company houses for workers.

Los Alamitos was incorporated on March 1, 1960, with a population of only about 3,400 people.

Los Alamitos had a population of 11,780 at the 2020 census, up slightly from 11,449 in 2010, making it one of Orange County's smaller and more stable cities.

Los Alamitos has about 4,414 households according to Census QuickFacts for 2020-2024, with an average of 2.63 persons per household.

Unusually for an Orange County suburb, only about 42.4% of Los Alamitos homes are owner-occupied, and about 88.2% of residents had lived in the same house for at least a year.

Nearly half the city is a military base: the Joint Forces Training Base, a reserve training center for all branches of the armed forces, occupies about 48% of Los Alamitos's roughly 4.3 square miles.

Los Alamitos gives its name and postal address to the Los Alamitos Race Course just across Katella Avenue in neighboring Cypress, a track that holds four quarter horse stakes races with purses over $1 million — more than any other track in the United States.

Racing at the Los Alamitos track began as informal match races on the Vessels Ranch in 1947, and its first pari-mutuel meet was held in 1951.