A trip down Memory Lane

Tom Jacobsen of Jacobsen Pilot Services watches an artist add his entry to the Memory Lane wall at the Port's 100th Birthday Party.

At the Port's 100th Birthday Party last month on Pier E, one of the most interesting exhibits was our Memory Lane area, which was sponsored by Gensler. There, people with memories of the Port to share could leave a note on the wall or draw something themselves; they also could share their memories and stories with artists who turned those stories into a series of text and drawings.

If you missed the birthday party or just didn't get a chance to take a look at Memory Lane during the festivities, you can get an up close look here at some of the art. Just click here to see a photo gallery; we recommend you click the "full-screen" button in the lower-right corner of the gallery so you can see the art up close.

Adding a note to the Memory Lane wall.

The Port's highest honor

President Dwight Eisenhower receives one of the inaugural Honorary Port Pilot Awards in 1954.

Since 1954, the Port of Long Beach has recognized extraordinary contributions to the world of international trade with the Honorary Port Pilot Award. The port's highest honor is named for the harbor port pilots who are entrusted to safely guide cargo ships in and out of the port.

The first group of awardees in '54 included President Dwight Eisenhower, Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie, California Gov. Goodwin Knight and the secretaries of the Navy and Interior.

Awards over the years have gone to notables like the Prime Minister of Japan, President Ronald Reagan, and many other elected and appointed officials. Closer to home, three executive directors of the Port have been honored, and also Capt. J.A. Jacobsen and Richard Jacobsen of Jacobsen Pilot Service, the only father and son to receive the awards.

This year, the award is going to Jon F. Hemingway, CEO of SSA Marine. You can read more about his award here, and you'll find a complete list of recipients at our Port Pilot page.

Click here to see a photo gallery of some past recipients.

The Miss Universe Pageant

Harbor Commissioner John P. Davis with Miss Universe Hillevi Rombin of Sweden at Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Revue, Nov. 8, 1955.

The Miss Universe Pageant? What does the Port of Long Beach have to do with a beauty pageant? Well, the Port for many years has been heavily involved in sponsoring major civic institutions and events -- today the Port sponsors the July 4 fireworks, the Long Beach Sea Festival, the Grand Prix, and literally dozens of other festivities and programs, large and small, throughout Long Beach.

In 1952, one of the newest and biggest civic events was the Miss Universe Pageant, which was first held here at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium (Armi Kuusela of Finland won the title, and the Miss USA Pageant was held at the same time). Miss Universe held eight pageants in Long Beach before moving to Miami for a long stint; now the ceremony moves among the participating countries.

The Port of Long Beach Miss Universe float, 1955.

Naturally as a civic supporter the Port did its utmost to boost the contest; it ran a float in the annual Miss Universe parade along Ocean Boulevard and hosted the contestants on harbor cruises, at Disneyland and at various events around town. In fact, after Miss Universe left the Port continued to host contestants in the International Beauty Congress competition -- you can see a photo of some of them feeding the sea lions at Pierpoint Landing here.

The Port archives don't have any photos of the ceremonies (although there's a lot of film on YouTube of crownings), but the other events offer great snapshots of Ocean Boulevard, early days at Disneyland and of course some glimpses of 1950s fashion. Enjoy!

You can read more about Miss Universe here.

See a photo gallery of Miss Universe and the Port here.

The 1955 parade rides past "The Seven Year Itch" playing at the Fox West Coast on Ocean.

Soap, shortening and more

The Procter & Gamble plant on what's now Pier C.

A mainstay of manufacturing at the Port of Long Beach for over 55 years was the Procter & Gamble plant, which opened in 1931 on the Seventh Street Peninsula. A couple of years earlier, the same piece of land was the site of the Pacific Southwest Exposition.

A mound of copra is stored at the P&G facility.

From 1931 until the plant closed in 1988, workers there produced familiar products like Ivory soap, Tide and Cascade detergents, Crisco shortening and many more. Raw materials like copra, the dried meat of coconuts used to produce coconut oil, came in ships to docks adjacent to the plant and were stored for use in manufacturing.

In 1987, Procter & Gamble decided to close the plant as a cost-saving measure, but the area is still a source of jobs: the Port purchased the land and turned it into a container terminal. Now Matson/SSA operates on what is now called Pier C.

If you worked at the Procter & Gamble plant we'd love to hear from you -- you can use our Share Your Memories page to contact us.

Click here for a photo gallery with more images from the Procter and Gamble plant.

Read a 1987 Los Angeles Times article about the plant's closure.

Rose Hart inspects bottles of Crisco oil at the plant, probably in 1981.

Matson memories

A sign advertising Matson's terminal at the Port of Los Angeles (Photo courtesy of Matson)

Reader Tom Kennedy wrote us to share some reminiscences of working at Matson back in the 1950s and 1960s when they were at the Port of Los Angeles. His duties, as he explains, took him to the Port of Long Beach often, and he tells the story of what it was like dealing with bulk cargo in the days before containerization:

During the 1950s and ’60s Matson Navigation Co. was located at Berths 195-200A in Wilmington L.A. Harbor. Matson’s main business was to serve the Hawaiian Islands. The main eastbound — Hawaii to mainland — was agricultural in the form of pineapples and sugar. Hawaii was not yet a state in the earlier period of this span. A big requirement for Hawaii was large quantities of fertilizer: potash, urea, etc. This product was shipped into the bulk terminal at Long Beach in rail cars – gondolas/hopper cars etc. mainly from Trona, Calif., and other points – trains sometimes from a quarter- to a half-mile long.

Dealing with sand or a similar bulk cargo at the Port of
Long Beach, 1955 (Port of Long Beach photo)

My position with Matson at that time was to arrange for our vessels to load this cargo at the Long Beach bulk loading terminal. My contact at the time was Mr. Chuck Murray of Metropolitan Stevedoring. He was a great guy to work with. We had excellent rapport and enjoyed our association.

The vessels we used at that time were C3s and possibly an odd Victory or Liberty. Matson subsidiary Oceanic SS Co., with trade routes in the Southern Pacific, also used the Long Beach loading facility. They carried large cargoes of sand – yes, sand from Australia. It was a special kind of sand – zircon and rutile and was used in the production of titanium metal. When the bulk sand was unloaded from the vessel it was transferred to rail cars and dispatched to the Titanium Metal Corp. in Henderson, Nev.

Matson also handled a large volume of military cargo for M.S.T.S. (Military Sea Transport Service), whose distribution center was in Long Beach Harbor. I dealt with a Mr. A.D. Cole, manager, there (now deceased). It required routing the vessel to the Long Beach facility for loading, mostly foodstuffs and autos, to and from Pearl Harbor plus a myriad of other commodities.

Matson's Port of LA terminal during the early days of
containerization (Photo courtesy of Matson)

Time marches on and with the advent of containerization in the mid- to late ’60s American Potash and Chemical Co. etc. were forced to pack the fertilizer in 100-pound paper sacks and ship in rail cars to the LB/LA area to be transferred to ocean containers for shipment to Hawaii. They may now load containers at origin and ship direct to the line, of that I’m not sure, but it would seem to be logical.

I don’t know what happened to the sand. The Oceanic SS Co. ceased to do business.

Matson is now a tenant of the Port of Long Beach, using SSA for their stevedoring. 

Matson at Pier C in the Port of Long Beach in 2007. (Port of Long Beach photo)

Making 100 years of history

At our 100th Birthday Party on June 25, our Centennial documentary, Faces of the Port: Remembering 100 Years, will premiere in two screenings, at 3 p.m. and 4:15 p.m.

The documentary, which took about a year to assemble, features interviews with two dozen people about the history of the Port, as well as historic photographs and rare film footage unearthed by the team at Media 360, who made the film. The story is narrated by actor Robert Wagner.

You can read all about the making of Faces of the Port here.

To find out more about the Port's 100th Birthday Party, visit www.polb.com/birthday, and to reserve seats at one of the screenings, visit www.polb.com/movie.

Watch the trailer:

Angels at the Port

Many films, television series and commercials use the Port of Long Beach as a location -- we'll be featuring some of them in upcoming blog posts.

Reader Robert Aguilar, Jr. worked on one of those productions and wrote in with this memory:

"My first visit to the Port of Long Beach was during the filming of Charlie's Angels - Full Throttle in 2002, where I worked on the production staff. In this photo you will see the Angels in the coal fields riding motorcycles. It was a great scene and the people at the Port were fun to work with. In this picture: Drew Barrymore, Long Beach local Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu."

Those "coal fields" are just a memory now, too. Not too long after this photo was taken, all the petroleum coke stored at and shipped through the Port of Long Beach was covered up or enclosed to drastically reduce the release of polluting dust into the air. The coke facilities are still in operation on Piers F and G.