South Gate Tutors

About South Gate

The city of South Gate is a beautiful and well populated community, a city with stores, boutiques, restaurants, and housing tracts. It’s hard to believe this town was once open prairie land, and more amazing still that the town was essentially laid and started in one day! How is this possible, well, to fully understand you first must know the history of the town itself.

If you’ve been reading up on history with your South Gate tutor, then you know that California has belonged to a multitude of people before becoming a part of the United States. The land that would become South Gate got its start from a land grant, presented by the King of Spain in 1810. Francisco Lugo had been an awarded cavalry corporal in his army, and as tribute he granted a very large piece of land to Francisco’s son, Don Antonio Maria Lugo. This vast landscaped operated as a horse and cattle ranch, with Don Antonio acting as the sheriff and judge of the land, settling disputes among farmers and coordinating who owned what animals. A little more than 100 years of the land was granted, the area of land near the south gate would become the town of South Gate, but we aren’t quite there yet in our story.

As I had mentioned, the city of South Gate was essentially laid out in one fated day, and it was all due to the South Gate Gardens-Gateway to the Sea. A very large amount of land was for sale, and realtor Charles B. Hooper was going to make sure that land was sold. Instead of selling it as one large property, the realtor broke up the area into mostly ½ acre lots. Parallel furrows were ploughed roughly 50 feet apart where future streets could be made. Handmade street signs were placed at each corner with hypothetical street names, most of which actually ended up sticking. Hooper arranged for 12 buses to travel routes through neighboring towns, picking up interested parties. Not everyone took the buses, many more just drove in. Even with no actual streets, no sewers, and no water systems, the land was bought up in a flurry that day, and almost $25,000 dollars of land was sold, a very, very large amount in those days.

That iconic sale is what gave the city of South Gate it’s start, and the beginning of a prosperous and beautiful town. Today you’d have a hard time imagining the cattle grazing on the open plains, cowboys sitting atop their horses watching the herds. Today you have amenities like running water, and being able to meet with your South Gate tutor, but it is always good to know your heritage and where you came from!