El Segundo ( EL sə-GUN-doh, Spanish: [el seˈɣundo]; Spanish for 'The Second') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located on Santa Monica Bay, it was incorporated on January 18, 1917, and is part of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments. The population was 16,731 as of the 2020 census, a 0.5% increase from 16,654 in the 2010 census.
A significant center of the oil and aerospace industries in Southern California, roughly three quarters of the city's land is dedicated exclusively to industrial and commercial uses, including a Chevron oil refinery which alone takes up more than a quarter of the entire city.
El Segundo is immediately south of LAX and most hotels offer free shuttle transfers to and from the airport. The east-west Century Freeway (I-105) runs along the northern edge of El Segundo, exiting onto the Imperial Highway and terminating at the ocean. I-405 runs north-south just east of El Segundo with a couple of convenient exits at Rosecrans Avenue and El Segundo Boulevard. CA-1, the Pacific Coast Highway, passes north-south through the heart of El Segundo as Sepulveda Boulevard.
The Metro Green Line runs along the eastern edge of El Segundo, with both Mariposa/Nash and El Segundo/Nash stations within city limits.
Most travel is by car. Walking along the busy streets can be unpleasant, due to the exhaust.
It is generally accepted that the city is named after the second (el segundo in Spanish) Standard Oil refinery on the West Coast, built in 1911.
El Segundo is two cities in one. The coastal portion is a residential suburb with a charming Main Street which looks frozen in time. Locals both affectionately and derisively call it "Mayberry By The Sea", referring to the sleepy fictional town which was the setting for the American television show The Andy Griffith Show in the early 1960s.
The "inland portion" of El Segundo is a thriving business district. Aerospace companies with facilities in El Segundo include Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the Aerospace Corporation, which is headquartered there. It is also home to the Los Angeles Air Force Base and the Space and Missile Systems Center and Toy Manufacturer Mattel.
El Segundo is home to the blue butterfly, now an endangered species. These butterflies, which once used to reside in the sand dunes of El Segundo over an area of 4.5 square miles, have now been pushed into three small areas of what is left of those dunes.
