Norwalk, California

Norwalk was laid out by Gilbert Sproul, who with his brother Atwood bought land here in eighteen sixty-nine. Gilbert surveyed the town site in eighteen seventy-three, and the name Norwalk was officially recorded in eighteen seventy-four, though the exact origin of the name is not settled. The area became one of the most productive dairy regions in California, becoming part of the dairy country of southeast Los Angeles County.

When the post-World War Two suburban wave arrived, the dairies gave way to subdivisions almost overnight. Norwalk incorporated as a city in nineteen fifty-seven, and the nineteen sixty census counted nearly ninety thousand residents. It is home to Metropolitan State Hospital, a state psychiatric hospital formerly known as Norwalk State Hospital, which sits on about one hundred sixty-two acres.