Lomita, California

The Lomita Railroad Museum is a museum in Lomita, California devoted to California railroad history. “Exhibits include a full-size steam locomotive with tender and caboose, and a station housing scale models, photographs and paintings of trains.” It was founded by Irene Lewis in the early 1960s on a single lot in the middle of a residential part of Lomita, and had its grand opening on June 23, 1967. The museum building is a replica of a 19th-century depot, Boston & Maine's Greenwood Station that once stood in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and there is a full size replica of a water tower. The museum grounds now function as a small public park.

Nathaniel Narbonne High School (NHS) is a school located at 24300 South Western Avenue, in the Harbor City area of Los Angeles, California. Narbonne serves grades 9 through 12 and is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Narbonne serves the Harbor City area and the city of Lomita. The school motto is "Domus Victorum" which means "Home of the Victors." Narbonne's colors are green and gold. The school's mascot is the Gaucho, which is often regarded as an Argentinian cowboy. The official fight song for the high school is "Onward Narbonne!" which is a variation of "On, Wisconsin!" – the official state song of Wisconsin as well as the fight song of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Nishiyamato Academy of California (西大和学園カリフォルニア校, Nishiyamato gakuen kariforunia kō, NAC) is a private Japanese international day school for students from pre-kindergarten through 9th grade, offering a Japanese guideline-based curriculum. The co-educational academy consists of a kindergarten, an elementary school division, and a middle school division with approximately 150 students, all located in Lomita, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Since March 1996, the academy has been authorized by Japanese Ministry of Education and its successor Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as a Private Overseas Educational Facility (私立在外教育施設, Shiritsu zaigai kyōiku shisetsu).Nishiyamato Academy offers its own Saturday school program, the Nishiyamato Academy Saturday School (西大和学園補習校 Nishiyamato gakuen hoshūkō) for the children of Japanese expatriates, who are enrolled in local primary or secondary day schools in Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Harbor City is a highly diverse neighborhood in the South Bay and Harbor region of Los Angeles, California, with a population upward of 36,000 people. Originally part of the Rancho San Pedro Spanish land grant, the 2.58-square-mile (6.7 km2) Harbor City was brought into Los Angeles as a preliminary step in the larger city's consolidation with the port cities of Wilmington and San Pedro. The area includes two high schools and seven other schools, as well as the Ken Malloy Harbor Regional and two other parks. There is a Kaiser Permanente hospital as well. Harbor City's percentage of high school graduates is larger than the city's as a whole.

Rancho San Pedro was one of the first California land grants and the first to win a patent from the United States. The Spanish Crown granted the 75,000 acres (300 km2) of land to soldier Juan José Domínguez in 1784, with his descendants validating their legal claim with the Mexican government at 48,000 acres (190 km2) in 1828, and later maintaining their legal claim through a United States patent validating 43,119 acres (174.50 km2) in 1858. The original Spanish land grant included what today consists of the Pacific coast cities of Los Angeles harbor, San Pedro, the Palos Verdes peninsula, Torrance, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Manhattan Beach, and east to the Los Angeles River, including the cities of Lomita, Gardena, Harbor City, Wilmington, Carson, Compton, and western portions of Long Beach and Paramount.

Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park, commonly Harbor Park, is a 231-acre (0.93 km2) Los Angeles municipal park featuring a golf course and 45-acre (0.18 km2) Machado Lake and freshwater wetland. Harbor Park is the third-largest park in Los Angeles city parks system after Griffith Park and Elysian Park.Harbor Park is located west of Harbor Freeway and south of Pacific Coast Highway, adjacent to Los Angeles Harbor College. In addition to the lake and golf course, amenities include barbecue pits and picnic tables, children's playgrounds, a bike path and walking trail, and an outdoor fitness zone.The park is visited by migratory birds and is a "dedicated city wildlife sanctuary." More than 160 species of birds have been observed in the park since it reopened in 2017 after a rehab, and it's "one of the best places in the South Bay" to see the "secretive" marsh wren. The historic pre-development bird list for the park land is significantly longer. However, the park's wetland habitat is periodically disrupted by litter and debris flows from city storm drains. The park is a "natural low point, collecting water from a 9,000-acre (36 km2) watershed."The refurbishment completed in 2017 included "pathways, four observation piers, two observation zones, two pedestrian bridges, interpretive signs, new park fixtures, 622 new park trees, and over 50,000 new plants."Prior to the improvements "alien species and pollution [were] serious problems at the park." Circa 2011, problematic invasive species with breeding populations within the park included "bullfrogs, apple snails as big as baseballs and Florida banded water snakes."The infamous alligator Reggie lived at the park for two years from 2005 to 2007 until he was finally captured and relocated to the Los Angeles Zoo. (The two-year hunt for Reggie "astoundingly…netted another, smaller alligator.")As of 2014, Lake Machado was described as “a state-designated 'impaired water body' because of its witch's brew of trash, algae, coliform bacteria, foul odors and hazardous substances. Adjacent habitat is strewn with broken glass. Interlopers wage paintball wars and drive vehicles through the nesting and foraging grounds of more than 300 species of birds. The park has only one working restroom and no security. Brush fires are annual events."Prior to 2002, "Boating and fishing were originally allowed in the Lake, and until recently fish were stocked in the Lake. As water quality deteriorated and toxic sediment accumulated, boating was stopped and signs have been posted with warnings about the risk of eating fish from the Lake.""Mosquitoes have been a chronic problem that has been exacerbated by flourishing tule growth in the accumulated sediments along the east shore," noted a report in the Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation. Encephalitis-bearing mosquitoes were found in the park at one point and a caged flock of hens was placed in the park to use for mosquito testing. (Mosquitoes apparently prefer to feast on poultry before primate when given a choice.)

Bixby Slough (American English pronunciation: “slew/slu”) was an ancient wetland in Los Angeles County, California. Also known as Machado Lake, the slough was a "large freshwater wetland in the Carson-Harbor City-Wilmington area" that flowed into San Pedro Bay about three or four miles (5 km) west of Dominguez Slough. Originally a "network of sloughs, nondescript streams and bogs in the harbor district," over time the Port of Los Angeles was carved “out of the mud flats and shallow waters that edged the ranchos of San Pedro and Palos Verdes.” About 90 percent of wetland ecosystems in Los Angeles County have been destroyed, with the losses in the highly urbanized South Bay "especially acute" and one biologist calling the draining of Bixby Slough and other harbor-area wetlands a “"wipeout".

Rancho de los Palos Verdes was a 31,629-acre (128.00 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to José Loreto and Juan Capistrano Sepulveda. The name means "ranch of the green trees". The grant encompassed the present-day cities of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, as well as portions of San Pedro and Torrance.

Zamperini Field (IATA: TOA, ICAO: KTOA, FAA LID: TOA) is a public airport three miles (5 km) southwest of downtown Torrance, in Los Angeles County, California, United States.The airport is classified by the FAA as a Regional Reliever and was once known as Torrance Municipal Airport; it was renamed for local sports and war hero Louis Zamperini on December 7, 1946, the fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Western Museum of Flight (WMOF) is an aviation museum located at Zamperini Field, the municipal airport in Torrance, California. WMOF is operated by the Southern California Historical Aviation Foundation. It houses not only historic aircraft, many of which were built in Southern California, but also has an extensive collection of historic photographs and blueprints. The museum has several rare aircraft among its collection, including the second Northrop YF-23 Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) 5th generation stealth fighter demonstrator. Also on display is the first Northrop YF-17 Cobra, a lightweight fighter which was the basis for the Boeing (originally McDonnell-Douglas) F/A-18 Hornet currently used by the United States Navy and Marine Corps. In addition, a Grumman F-14 Tomcat and Douglas A-4A, plus numerous other notable jet- and propeller-drive airplanes. The WMOF is one of two museums that house the only surviving Jack Northrop flying wings (Northrop N-1M at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center annex of the National Air and Space Museum and the Northrop JB-1 Bat glider (crewed) at the WMOF).

The Mary Star of the Sea High School (Mary Star High) is a private, Roman Catholic high school in San Pedro neighborhood, Los Angeles, California. The school is operated by Mary Star of the Sea Parish under the supervision of the Department of Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It was named one of the Top 50 Catholic High Schools in America in 2006.

The South Coast Botanic Garden is a 87 acres (35 ha) botanical garden in the Palos Verdes Hills, in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, California, United States, about 10 miles (16 km) south of Los Angeles International Airport. It has over 150,000 landscaped plants and trees from approximately 140 families, 700 genera, and 2,000 different species, including flowering fruit trees, Coast Redwoods, Ginkgos and Pittosporum. It is particularly rich in plants from Australia and South Africa. Its gardens include the Water-wise Garden, Herb Garden, English Rose Garden, and Garden of the Senses. A small lake and stream bed attract various birds such as ducks, geese, coots, and herons. Over 300 species of birds have been recorded. The lake is currently empty. The site was operated as an open pit mine from 1929 until 1956, producing over one million tons of crude diatomite. With declining production, the land was sold in 1957 to the County of Los Angeles for a sanitary landfill, which was in use until 1965. Starting in 1961, an experiment in land reclamation began when County Board of Supervisors approved a motion establishing the site as the South Coast Botanic Garden, which was landscaped over 3.5 million tons of refuse, in an example of land recycling. The Sanitation District in cooperation with other County agencies carried out initial planning, grading and contouring. Operating responsibilities were given to the Los Angeles County Department of Arboreta and Botanic Gardens. In April 1961, the first large-scale planting took place on completed fill overlooking Rolling Hills Road, with over 40,000 plants donated by individuals, nurseries and the County Arboretum. The site presents unusual difficulties in gardening. First, its soil is composed almost entirely of diatomaceous earth. Second, because of the diverse nature and thickness of the fill, settling rates vary throughout the garden resulting in frequent irrigation system breakage. Third, heat is caused by decomposition of organic matter below the soil surface, and it is accompanied by the production of gases, primarily carbon dioxide and methane.