Security Guard in Torrance, CA

For thousands of years, the area where Torrance is located was part of the Tongva Native American homeland.

In 1784, the Spanish Crown deeded Rancho San Pedro (including today’s Torrance), a tract of over 75,000 acres (300 km²) in the Province of Las Californias of New Spain, to soldier Juan José Domínguez. It was later divided in 1846, with Governor Pío Pico granting Rancho de los Palos Verdes to José Loreto and Juan Capistrano Sepulveda in the Alta California territory of independent Mexico.

In the early 1900s, real estate developer Jared Sidney Torrance and other investors saw the value of creating a mixed industrial-residential community south of Los Angeles. They purchased part of an old Spanish land grant and hired landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to design a planned community. The resulting town was founded in October 1912 and named after Torrance. The city of Torrance was formally incorporated in May 1921, the townsite initially being bounded by Western Avenue on the east, Del Amo Boulevard on the north, Crenshaw Boulevard on the west, and on the south by Plaza Del Amo east of where it meets Carson Street, and by Carson Street west of where it meets Plaza Del Amo.