Wilmington is a neighborhood in the Harbor region of Los Angeles, California, covering .
Featuring a heavy concentration of industry and the third-largest oil field in the continental United States, this neighborhood has a high percentage of Latino and foreign-born residents. Nearly 20 percent of Wilmington’s total land area is taken up by oil refineries — roughly 3.5 times more area than is dedicated to open and accessible green spaces. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wilmington had one of the highest death rates in all of Los Angeles County, exacerbated by elevated levels of industrial pollution.
It is the site of Banning High School, and ten other primary and secondary schools. Wilmington has six parks.
Wilmington dates its history back to a 1784 Spanish land grant. It became a separate city in 1863, and it joined the city of Los Angeles in 1909. Places of interest include the headquarters U.S. Army for Southern California and the Drum Barracks built to protect the nascent Los Angeles harbor during the American Civil War.
Geography
Wilmington shares borders with Carson to the north, Long Beach to the east, San Pedro to the south and west and Harbor City to the northwest.
Demographics
A total of 53,815 people were living within Wilmington's 9.14 square miles, according to the 2010 U.S. census—averaging 5,887 people per square mile, among the lowest population densities in the city as a whole. The median age was 28. The percentages of people from birth through age 34 were among the county's highest. Population was estimated at 54,512 in 2008.
Wilmington is not considered very diverse ethnically, with a diversity index of 0.245. In 2000, Latinos made up 86.6% of the population, while non-Hispanic whites were at 6.4%, Asians at 4.8%, blacks at 2.6% and others at 1.7%. Mexico and Guatemala were the most common places of birth for the 44.5% of the residents who were born abroad, considered a high percentage of foreign-born when compared with the city and the county as a whole.
The $40,627 median household income in 2008 dollars was average for the city. Renters occupied 61.5% of the housing units, with homeowners occupying the rest. In 2000 there were 1,524 military veterans, or 4.6% of the population, relatively low in comparison to the city and county as a whole.
There is a Mexican-American community in Wilmington.
History
The area that is now Wilmington was inhabited by the Tongva people of Native Americans. Archeological work in the nearby Chowigna excavation show evidence of inhabitants as far back as 7,100 years ago.
The Spanish Empire expanded into this area when the Viceroy of New Spain commissioned Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to explore the Pacific Ocean in 1542–1543. In 1784, the Spanish Crown deeded Rancho San Pedro, a tract of over in the area, to retired soldier Juan José Domínguez, for his service with the Portolà expedition into the area over a decade earlier.
Phineas Banning acquired the land that would become Wilmington from Manuel Dominguez, grand nephew and heir to Juan José Domínguez, in 1858 to build a harbor for the city of Los Angeles. Known as New San Pedro from 1858 to 1863, it was subsequently renamed Wilmington by Banning, a.k.a. “Father of the Harbor”, after his birthplace, Wilmington, Delaware.
In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, Banning and Benjamin Wilson gave the federal government 60 acres of land to build Drum Barracks to protect the nascent Los Angeles harbor from Confederate attack.
Wilmington was a township in the 1870 census. The township consisted of the present-day South Bay communities, Compton, western Long Beach, parts of Rattlesnake Island and Mormon Island which later evolved into Terminal Island. Census records report a population of 942 in 1870. The township had been named San Pedro Township in 1860.
Wilson College, precursor to the University of Southern California, opened in Wilmington in 1874 as the first coeducational college west of the Mississippi.