Lakewood tourist information
Lakewood has dozens of shopping destinations. Lakewood Center is one of the largest regional malls in Southern California. Lakewood Marketplace, Pioneer Square, and Lakewood Square offer specialty shops and super markets. The new Wal-Mart center brings the world’s largest retailer to Lakewood. Lakewood’s Cherry Avenue “auto row” is home to three new car dealers. The Candlewood Avenue “restaurant row,” Candlewood shops, and expanded Pacific Theatres complex make Lakewood Center an exciting nighttime destination.
Lakewood has ten major parks for family activities, organized sports leagues, community gatherings, and recreation classes. All Lakewood parks have picnic areas and plenty of beautiful landscaping. Mayfair Park and Bolivar Park each have public pools, with seasonal swimming instruction, water aerobics, diving, and lifesaving classes.
Rynerson Park, at Studebaker Road and Del Amo Boulevard, is north of the Lakewood Equestrian Center. The Equestrian Center has horse boarding and bridle paths.
by City of Lakewood California
At the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills, Lakewood is the third largest city in the Denver Metro area.
Lakewood features three industrial parks, two colleges, a Victorian downtown shopping district, shopping centers, suburban homes, parks and recreational facilities, numerous churches and synagogues, and many public and private schools. We also host two golf courses with a third being constructed, Kimball Medical Center, a municipal airport, and numerous adult or senior citizen communities. Founded in 1892, Lakewood Township is growing and prosperous and has a population of 60,352 according to the 2000 census.
Development in Lakewood has been a recent event, with over 90% of homes built in the last half-century. Since 1970, our population has nearly doubled. Our Industrial Park is the second largest in the state, and our Urban Enterprise Zone provides advantages and incentives to companies and savings to consumers, promoting a healthy business climate.
Lakewood schools reflect our commitment to education and future growth. Our public, private, and alternate high school make up a comprehensive educational program which provides a forum for a variety of talents and interests. Lakewood is home to two colleges, Georgian Court, brought here by the Sisters of Mercy in 1924, and Beth Medrash Govoha, the leading Rabbinical and Talmudic Studies college in the United States.
As equally impressive as our development is our preservation of nature. Lakewood has over 1,200 acres of parkland as well as two golf courses with a third under construction. This doesn't include numerous baseball, football, and soccer fields that provide a place for local sports.
Lakewood is located along the shore of Lake Erie, 5 miles west of Cleveland's Public Square. Lakewood is widely known as a "City of Homes." It offers both the amenities of city living and the charm of a small town. Solidly built one and two-family homes, many with comfortable front porches, line its tree-lined streets. Within Lakewood's 5.6 square miles there is a diversity in housing, from modest single homes to luxury "Gold Coast" condominiums. The northern section of Clifton Park, a residential neighborhood, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Lakewood's population of 56,646 (2000 census) makes it the fourteenth largest city in Ohio. The total number of dwelling and rooming units, residential and commercial is 28,625, and the average household size is 2.2 persons.
Lakewood is cool! Cleveland Free Times, the alternative news weekly with a readership of sophisticated, educated, upwardly mobile, young adults, published results of the 2001 Best of Northeast Ohio, declaring Lakewood as "the big winner" in the category "Best city/suburb to live in."
In 1994, the Buckeye Center for Public Policy Solutions, a non-profit think tank based in Dayton and composed of Ohio professors, ranked Lakewood tops in economic climate among Ohio's 19 largest cities. The study evaluated taxes, crime and the regulatory burden of government.
As an older, inner-ring suburb, Lakewood has confronted many of the challenges of today's urban areas, such as decrease in population, increase in poverty, and aging infrastructure. As a mature community with high-density development, it has not contributed to the broader, regional problems attributed to exurban sprawl. The city remains a stable, welcoming community with a rich past, a vibrant present and promising future.
In 1995 a citizen survey by the National Survey Research Center reported that 98% rated city services average or above; 36% rated them excellent. An impressive 87% would recommend Lakewood as a place to live.
Lakewood was called the Prairie in the beginning - an expanse of land about 20 miles square, dotted with small lakes and occasional stands of oak and Douglas fir trees. Steilacoom and Nisqually Indians held pow-wows on The Prairie - before the advent of the White hunters, trappers and settlers.
This abundant Nisqually Prairie, midway between the Columbia River and the city of Vancouver, BC, was chosen by the British as the site of one of its fur trading operations by the Hudson Bay Company in 1833.
Hunters began to set up farming on The Prairie. One of these farms, at the present site of Western State Hospital, was leased by the US Army in 1849 to serve as a military post following an Indian attack on Fort Nisqually. The new fort, called Fort Steilacoom, was used to quell Indian uprisings. Settlers from as far away as the Puyallup Valley used the Fort as a protection from danger.
About that time the first grist mill (1850), saw mill (1852) and flour mill (1855) were set up in the area now known as the Chambers Creek Estuary. Immigrants began to arrive in covered wagons over Naches Pass in 1853 after Washington became a Territory. Steilacoom became the first incorporated town in the Territory in 1854. As the new population increased, so did hostilities with the native tribes. Indian uprising continued over land they considered theirs, but was being rented by the U.S. government to the Hudson Bay Company at $50 a month.
Nisqually's Chief Leschi became a tragic martyr when he was falsely accused of murder as a result of one such uprising. He was hanged on February 18, 1858 in a grove of oak trees near where the Oakbrook Shopping Center now stands.
The era known as The Indian Wars brought to Fort Steilacoom many army lieutenants and captains who would make names for themselves during the Civil War - General George B. McClellan, Confederate General George E. Pickett, Union General Philip H. Sheridan and Union General U.S. Grant who later became President.
McClellan was selected in March 1873 to supervise the survey for the location of the western terminus of the much-anticipated Northwest Pacific Railway. However, the intervention of the Civil War delayed actual construction of the road until the 1870's. Many small communities on Puget Sound vied for the distinction of being the western terminus. The selection of Tacoma was announced on July 14th, 1873 bringing about a thrilling drama centered on the prairie near Gravelly Lake.
As the railroad progressed within a few miles of Tacoma in September 1873, a financial panic caused the railroad's financiers to fail. With the railroad's solvency in question and payrolls in arrears, the construction crew made up largely of tough ex-miners from the Cariboo gold fields of British Columbia, refused to work; they set up barricades at Clover Creek, a station then called Skookumville. In a scenario that matched suspense movies of the Clark Gable-Spencer Tracy era, an engineer named E. S. "Skookum" Smith convinced the crews that the tracks must reach the western terminus during the time limitation set by the U.S. government. The future of the Puget Sound rested with them! The last spike was driven at 3 p.m. on December 16, 1873. The first train arrived at the pre-arranged point for celebration just 24 hours before the expiration of the charter.
During the late 1800's, while England and the United States bickered over the 49th Parallel, the Prairie began to vanish. Homes and roads were built, with power lines at their side. The prolific Douglas Fir, no longer burned by the Indians, grew out of control. The land wrested by the British from the Indians, then by the U.S. from the British, became part of the 42nd State of the Union in 1889.
By the late 1800's, Indians and settlers were learning to live together, sometimes holding joint celebrations in the summertime on the natural picnic grounds of The Prairie. Contests of horseback riding often accompanied a good old-fashioned salmon bake.
The first school was built just west of the Flett Dairy property. One of the first houses built of frame rather than logs was the Boatman/Ainsworth residence on 112th Street across from Clover Park High School. At the turn of the 20th century, Steilacoom was being hailed as the "Newport of the Northwest." The Lakewood District was competing for the title. Many stately homes were built on estates along the shorelines of area lakes, the most impressive being Thornewood, built on American Lake between 1909 and 1911. The Thorne Mansion, renovated into a spectacular bed and breakfast, was once considered one of the most beautiful estates and gardens in the nation, and often attracted illustrious people of the early 1900s. Another spectacular home and garden of that era is the lovely Lakewold Gardens and Wagoner Home on Gravelly Lake Drive.
The Tacoma Country and Golf Club was established in 1894 to further attract the rich and famous. The first golf club west of the Mississippi, it featured trolley transportation from Tacoma to the playground on The Prairie.
In the early 1900's, the famed Tacoma Speedway was built around what is now the Lakewood Industrial Park. The mile-long wooden track circled the open prairie and drew racing greats, such as Barney Oldfield, Louis Chevrolet and Eddie Rickenbacker. A grandstand was built along Steilacoom Boulevard, about where Clover Park Technical College is today. During the Roaring 20's, summer residents began to expand their lake cottages into year-round homes.
Lakewood aerial map
Please click on any icon on the Lakewood aerial tourist map, to find close by places, offering hotels and tourist information. You can zoom in and zoom out our touristical map as well as switch between satelite and map view of Lakewood.
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