Love named it, World War II made...

By CECILIA RASMUSSEN

Jan. 10, 1997 12 AM PT

Love named it, World War II made it grow, and the Century Freeway cut it in half.

Lynwood, the city that advertised itself as “the best place to live best,” has survived urban transitions--not the least of them the development of a 14-acre toxic waste site--and major racial transitions to emerge as an ethnically mixed, working-class community of tidy homes.

The municipality traces its roots to 1902, when dairyman Charles Sessions decided to name his business the Lynwood Dairy and Creamery in honor of his wife, Lynne Wood Sessions.

Through the 1930s, there were many small dairies. Then they began to give way to tree-lined residential avenues, a trend that accelerated at the end of World War II when Lynwood became one of the first Southern California cities to triple and quadruple its population with the arrival of discharged World War II veterans who bought $8,000 houses with no money down.

The postwar period brought prosperity to Lynwood, and the factories along the Alameda Corridor grew.

But the price of progress would soon become evident. When Lynwood was named an All-American city in 1961, the Century Freeway was only a dotted line on an engineer’s map. Years later that dotted line would cleave the city in half, destroying 1,100 homes--10% of Lynwood’s houses. Although homeowners sued throughout the 1970s to stop construction of the freeway, the fits-and-starts work left a swath of four ravaged blocks in the heart of the city. Owners moved out, transients moved in, and the area became a ghost town.

As a result, property values citywide dropped, the city’s tax base diminished and the city stopped moving as the freeway went nowhere.

It was then that the city known as “Lily White Lynwood” began to change ethnically. As housing prices fell, minorities moved in, and “white flight” accelerated. By the 1970s, the city was mostly African American. Then, in the 1980s, Latinos eventually came to dominate the city’s demographics.

By the time construction on the Century Freeway began in earnest in the 1980s, Caltrans found it had to deal with a 14-acre toxic waste site.

The old Wilco Dump at the junction of the Long Beach and Century freeways was once owned by an early Lynwood booster and a former mayor from the 1950s. It cost the state $27 million to clean up the old car batteries, paint sludge, chemical waste and scrap metal.

Finally, on Oct. 14, 1993, more than 30 years after it had been planned, the Century Freeway--officially the Glenn M. Anderson Freeway--the $2.2-billion stretch of concrete that had become synonymous with urban decay and blight, opened.

Today, as Lynwood recovers from being split by progress, the federal government is offering tax incentives to the city to improve the community along the planned $1.8-billion Alameda Corridor--a 20-mile enlargement of railroad tracks and truck lanes to speed freight from the ports to railroad yards. Residents who remember the Century Freeway debacle wonder whether it is potentially Lynwood’s greatest boon--or biggest boondoggle.

By the Numbers

CITY BUSINESS

Date incorporated: July 16, 1921

Suare miles: 5

Number of city parks: 3

City employees: 140 fulltime; 115 part time

1996-97 operating budget: 48 million

ETHNIC MAKEUP

Latino: 70%

White: 6%

Asian: 2%

Black: 21%