Los Alamitos, CA

The Joint Forces Training Base is woven into Los Alamitos rather than sitting at its edge. It occupies a large share of this 4.01-square-mile Orange County city and continues a military presence that began after Pearl Harbor, when the Navy established a 1,300-acre aviation training field. Before aircraft arrived, the surrounding Rancho Los Alamitos—Spanish for “little cottonwoods”—became sugar-beet country, and a refinery helped form the early township. The first school opened in 1881 near today's Katella Avenue and Los Alamitos Boulevard. Military operations brought new residents and businesses during World War II, and the township incorporated as a charter city in 1960.

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Los Alamitos had 11,780 residents in the 2020 census. The base remains part of public recreation and celebration. The city runs youth swim lessons and other aquatics programming at its MWR Aquatic Training Center, although adult visitors must show federally accepted identification to enter. A partnership with the base also transferred the 7.89-acre Sunburst Field sports complex to city operation. Race on the Base and the annual 3rd of July Fireworks Spectacular turn military grounds into community venues; the 2026 fireworks program included live music, a family activity zone, food vendors, and the 40th Infantry Division Band. Away from the installation, nine named city parks range from pocket spaces to Little Cottonwood Park.

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In summer 2026, Little Cottonwood and Orville R. Lewis Jr. parks hosted a free weekday drop-in program for children, while the city's free concert series rotated among those parks and Pine Street. The nearby Los Alamitos–Rossmoor branch of Orange County Public Libraries adds study space, public computers, hotspots, a teen area, multilingual collections, and recurring adult book groups. Together, these shared facilities reveal a compact city whose civic calendar repeatedly crosses between neighborhood parks, Pine Street, the nearby county library branch, and an active military installation.