Long Beach State at 75

The first students registered for college at a strawberry stand by the side of the road. Early classes were held in the dining rooms of under-construction apartments. Such was the humble beginning of a little college in Long Beach that 75 years later boasts a large student body and one of the highest application rates in the country.

Long Beach State began in 1949 with the registration of 169 students, most of them at a strawberry stand on Pacific Coast Highway.

Students in those early days were returning WWII veterans, housewives, and people who longed to go to college but couldn’t manage to attend USC or UCLA. Seventy-five years later, California State University, Long Beach is now home to close to 40,000 students and regularly tops national surveys for its promotion of social mobility.

Long Beach State at 75 is a distinctive photo history that chronicles the college’s founding, its explosive expansion, and its growing pains and adventures along the way. Each decade is richly sprinkled with photos and text spotlighting that decade’s own unique ambience and cultural significance.

We hear from students who followed the football team in the 1950s, marched on campus in the 1960s, watched Jefferson Airplane on Hard Fact Hill in the 1970s, and those who sweated through games at the Gold Mine and endured COVID lockdowns.

Vignettes on students who went on to fame, such as Steve Martin, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band co-founder John McEuen, the Carpenters, and Steven Spielberg (who returned to graduate in 2002) are interspersed with interviews with students from varied backgrounds and those who played important roles in making the college what it is today.

A grad student’s risqué art project that led to massive demonstrations, the scramble to build the Walter Pyramid, the uphill fight to establish women’s sports on campus, and battles over faculty governance, sacred land, and women’s studies all form part of Long Beach State’s fascinating story.

Vintage photos and a modern, fresh look with a nostalgic nod to sleek sixties design make this coffee table book destined to find a coveted place in many settings. Whether you’re an alum, a “49er,” a “Shark,” or a student of California history, Long Beach State at 75 is a book for everyone.

Barbara Kingsley-Wilson is a full-time lecturer and media advisor at Cal State Long Beach. Before coming to CSULB in 2004, she was a journalist for 20 years, covering courts, crime, education, and sports for newspapers in the Midwest and Upstate New York, Southern California, and with USA Today. She spent the summer of 1995 in Amman, Jordan, interviewing women and government officials as part of a grant to study women and sports.

She has won awards from the Associated Press, Orange County and Los Angeles press clubs, and contributed stories to the Orange County Register’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a fertility scandal. Her book Long Beach State: A Brief History, was published in 2015. In addition to teaching, she is a freelance writer and certified yoga instructor who enjoys biking and nerding out on local history. She lives in Long Beach with her family.