The U.S. Census puts the population of Orange County at _______. Seal Beach had a population of 6,994. But new subdivisions and annexations soon added to the population." [http://www.orangecounty.net/cities/SealBeach.html]

The Enterprise reports it has 1,500 subscribers in Rossmoor.

Cortese combines his original Rossmoor suburban philosophy with his Leisure World philosophy and creates a private community in Walnut Creek with services appropriate to his views of retirement -- golf courses, swimming pools, clubhouses, riding stables, transportation, medical services, and a host of administrative employees to see that the residents did not have to bother themselves with house and yard maintenance, and even little things like garbage collection, television cable service, and watering the lawn!

JULY (Aug 4, 1960, Enterprise)  Rossmoor incorporation loses at the ballot 1,656 to 1,315.  However, pro-incorporation candidates Malcolm Lucas and Paul Erskine top the list of Rossmoor councilmen, had the incorporation vote passed.
     The day after the vote, Los Alamitos files to annex land adjacent to (west and south of) the Naval Air Station and next to Rossmoor (saying this will prevent Garden Grove from trying to annex Rossmoor).  Seal Beach files to annex Rossmoor one hour later. 

Arthur Miller

8 JUN 1961 - Los Alamitos HS site chosen - LA Times.  The land is purchased from the Bixby Land Company.

[note: not to be confused with the Bixby Ranch Company, Bixby Land Company was run by the descendants of Lewellyn and Jotham Bixby, owners of Rancho Los Cerritos. Bixby Ranch was run by descendants of Fred H. Bixby, and before that John Bixby, of Rancho Los Alamitos. Because Lewellyn and Jotham invested in their cousin John's purchase of Los Alamitos, upon John's sudden death in 1887, they came to own that part of the Rancho Los Alamitos property that was north of present Orangewood Avenue -- and adjacent to their Rancho Los Cerritos property. The heirs of John Bixby received the land south of Orangewood and roughly north of PCH in Long Beach and north of Garden Grove Blvd in Orange County.

Bethlehem Lutheran Church moves into Rossmoor.

The Church officially began with services being held  on September 18, 1960 in the Western Room Clubhouse of the Los Alamitos Race Track.  The cafeteria was used for Sunday School classes which were held at the same hour as worship.

   Bethlehem Lutheran Church was officially organized as a congregation of the United Lutheran Church in America .

Midway in 1961 came the chance for another move.  With most of the homes in Rossmoor sold, the sales office buildings became available for purchase.  The congregation relocated to its new home on Rossmoor Way transforming a sales office into a house of worship.  The Service of Entry was held on June 25, 1961 .  Sunday School classes and the church office were located in the Parish House, an adjacent home still standing at the corner of Rossmoor Way and Weatherby Road .

            During 1963, the need for additional space for future growth resulted in the next move.  This time the building on Rossmoor Way was placed on wheels and transported to a site in the northwest corner of Rossmoor.  There it was connected to another sales office that had been offered by Mr. Ross Cortese, the builder who had just completed Rossmoor Leisure World in Seal Beach .  During the construction period, the congregation held services and Sunday School in Rossmoor Elementary School .  On March 8, 1964 , the Service of Entry was held in the remodeled buildings at the present two-acre site on Katella Avenue at Wallingsford Road .

26 APR 1962 — Rossmoor's Freda Caplan becomes the first woman owner of a company in the Los Angeles Produce mart. 

6 JUN 1962 -- The first residents of the walled community of Leisure World moved in on June 6th, 1962. (Today there are approximately 9,000 residents which represents nearly one-half the households and one-third of the population of the City of Seal Beach.)

The National Association of Home Builders would later honor Cortese and Del Webb (developer of Sun City) as the two members who revolutionized the senior adult market. Del Webb and Ross Cortese separately created the first active adult developments, where seniors could enjoy a leisurely round of golf or a strenuous game of handball at their community recreation center. Cortese's first Leisure World, a 6,600-unit development in Seal Beach, Calif., was an instant success when it opened in 1960. The same was true that year for Del Webb's first Sun City, in Phoenix, where more than 100,000 seniors toured his community and bought 237 homes in the first weekend.

Leisure World was also the first mass-marketed gated community, said _____ Snyder, who along with Edward J. Blakely, dean of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California, conducted much research in Orange County for their new book on gated communities. The trend was developer-driven at the start, she said. It wasn't expensive to add a gate or a guardhouse, and it was a feature that caught the eye of prospective homebuyers when they first entered a neighborhood.

The land is owned by Rossmoor Partners, Inc., the liquidating trust for the properties of Leisure World’s late developer Ross Cortese.

JUNE 24 - Citizens National Bank officially opens a temporary branch office in the new Rossmoor Shopping center. 

The Center was expected to cost $20 million and cover 80 acres.  The first phase would cover 25 acres, include a grocery store, junior department store, a drug store, a bank and about 20 other retail and service elements. Parking would accommodate over 1,000 cars. 

SEPTEMBER 1962 -- Oak Junior High opens for grades 7-9.  Previously Los Alamitos, Rossmoor and College Park students attended Orangeview Junior High (for Grades 7-9) in Cypress and Western High School (Grades 10-12) in Buena Park. (although many also went to either Wilson or Poly High Schools in Long Beach). 

SEPTEMBER 1962 -- On June 30, 1962, R. Stanley Dollar Jr., son of the shipping magnate, sold family estate near Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County (about 8 miles east of Berkeley) to 43-year old Ross W. Cortese. (although per the LA Times, the deal was not filed until September, 1962. On this property, Cortese would develop a third project to be named Rossmoor, although the second came to be known more familiarly as Leisure World. The Northern California Rossmoor would combine the best of his first two Rossmoor projects. He would target the older market, but would have homes like the original Rossmoor and mutual units like Leisure World with golf courses and other recreation and common areas built throughout. This would be the prototype Cortese would go on to build in South Orange County, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey.

Walnut Creek which then had a population of around 10,000 would grow to 36,00 by the end of the decade.

1964

With the growing aerospace industry and other businesses, the economic level of people in Seal Beach began to rise, and the town began to grow.  After Old Town came the Marina Hill area, followed by College Park West in 1964 and College Park East, which was started in 1965 and completed in 1970.

S&S Homes — which had already purchased Bixby Ranch Land to build College Park in Long Beach -- and Bixby Land Company Land to build El Dorado Park Estates  — begins construction in Seal Beach of College Park West, a virtual island of a community that can only be accessed by a bridge from Long Beach.   It is very close to Cal State Long Beach.

Seal Beach becomes a charter city in 1964.

Residents of Rossmoor, while weighing options to incorporate as a city or be annexed by Los Alamitos, delay too long and end up losing their potentially richest tax-base, the Rossmoor Business Center, to annexation by the City of Seal Beach.  The Center and adjacent undeveloped land (a total of 5.9 acres) is accomplished with political maneuvering involving then Orange County 2nd District Supervisor David Baker, the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO),  and Seal Beach City Manager Lee Risner, and the property owner, Judge Alfred Gittleson (also somewhat famous for his landmark school-busing-for-integration decision).  Opposed to the annexation was the City of Los Alamitos and the Rossmoor Homeowners Association which had obtained 2,600 signatures in opposition.

Nonetheless, the change brings Seal Beach policing to the center plus a declaration that the interior streets were public streets.  Seal Beach also approved subdivisions and re-zoning to permit construction of apartments and condos on the center's acreage.

City of Dairyland changes name to La Palma.

S&S Homes begins construction of College Park East in 800 acres purchased from the Bixby Ranch Company and annexed by Seal Beach.

1966

SEP - even though it’s own campus is not finished, Los Alamitos High School  begins holding classes at Pine (now McAuliffe) Middle School.  That first year it accommodates the sophomore class of the soon-to-be-opened Los AlamitosHigh School.  

The Garden Grove Freeway (22) is completed

Los Alamitos and Seal Beach decided to widen Los Alamitos and Seal Beach boulevards.

To do this, 11 feet of the parkway separating the wall from the street was transferred from the Rossmoor Maintenance District, under county jurisdiction, to the two cities. The cities thought they were getting all the property up to the wall. But it appears they also got the wall.