Huguette Clark was worth a half billion when she died. So what does she have to do with Los Alamitos?

On May 24,  2011, Huguette Clark, one of the world’s richest women and subject of many TV reports last fall, died at the age of 104.

Worth over an estimated half billion dollars, she grew up in New York’s Gilded Age, among the Guggenheims, Astors, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts.  When she died, she hadn’t been seen in public for over 20 years, but still owned mansions in Connecticut, an estate overlooking the Paciific in Santa Barbara, and the largest apartment in New York City – a 42-room Fifth Avenue pad which overlooked Central Park.

And her father was at one time the largest landowner in Los Alamitos.

He was William Andrews Clark, the man usually credited for building the Los Alamitos sugar factory in 1896-97, and causing a new town to spring up from the former sheep pastures of the recently subdivided Rancho Los Alamitos.  Technically, it was younger brother, J. Ross Clark, who built and ran the sugar factory, the town, and the Montana Ranch — 8,000 additional acres purchased from Jotham and Lewellyn Bixby to grow sugar beets for their factory.   But because big brother William agreed to help fund it, William got to be company President and have people think he built it.

W.A. is often generously listed as a “Senator from Montana.” But he wasn’t yet a Senator when he helped finance the sugar factory — he was just one of America's greatest "robber barons" of the 19th century. And the only “captain of industry” to be considered as rich as Rockefeller.  Clark made fortunes in banks, mining, timber, newspapers, railroads and many other industries, including sugar and real estate – the Clarks would not only start Los Alamitos, but nine years later, when they were building a railroad from San Pedro to Salt Lake City, they would lay out and build the town of Las Vegas (which is why it’s in Clark County, Nevada).

W.A. Clark was ruthless.  He was up to his chin in monopolies and trusts, and he blatantly and shamelessly bought his Montana senator position by paying electors $10,000 in a monogrammed envelope.  Mark Twain called Clark "as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag." Not content with this, Twain added that Clark was "a shame to the American nation" whose proper place was behind bars.

A well-educated man who taught himself chemistry and spoke fluent French, Clark was not afraid to flaunt his wealth, building what is considered one of the gaudiest and most ostentatious mansions on Fifth Avenue in New York.  (It was said to cost three times what Yankee Stadium cost, and soon after his death it was torn down, and the paintings given to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C..) When William Andrews Clark died, most of his wealth passed down to his young second wife, Anna, 40 years his junior (and that's another story).  When Anna died in 1963, it went to Huguette.

By this time there was very little Clark presence left around our parts.  Over the years, after the land became too valuable to farm, the sugar factory and the Montana Ranch were sold off.  In 1933, the first piece of the ranch went to the Janss Company (builders of Westwood and Thousand Oaks) to build a new community called Lakewood Country Club.  The Depression halted most of this project.

Then large chunks were sold to build Long Beach City College, and in 1940 to Douglas Aircraft at the north end of the Long Beach Airport.  In 1946, the East Ranch – almost 500 acres east of the sugar factory was sold to Frank Vessels who would soon build a thriving race track on that site.  In 1950 the last remaining big piece of property was sold to Mark Taper, Ben Weingart, Louis Boyar and the Prudential Insurance Company who would bend the FHA and VA loan process to build the “instant city of Lakewood.”

Nowadays, except for Clark Avenue, one would be hard put to find any signs of Clark influence remaining in this area.

It’s very evident elsewhere.  Clark money helped build the University of Nevada and Las Vegas.  And William A. Clark Jr. used his fortune to fund much of the UCLA Library, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and this mausoleum at Hollywood cemetery.

But it’s still here as well.    These days, you just have to look a lot harder for it.

Read more at the Los Alamitos-Rossmoor History Project