History

Prior to the Spanish conquest, the area was inhabited by the Chumash tribe. The name of the city is derived from a Chumash word "Lum Poc" that means "little lake" or "lagoon." The Spanish called it "lumpoco." Mission La Purísima Concepción was established in 1787, near what is now the center of the city of Lompoc. After an earthquake in 1812, the mission was relocated to its present location northeast of the present city. In 1821, Mexico became independent from Spain, and subsequently secularized the California missions in 1833. Mission La Purísima gradually fell into ruins. The Mexican government granted the land around Lompoc to various settlers via land patents known as 'ranchos'.

The United States gained control of California in the Mexican-American War, 1846-1848. The valley was acquired by Thomas Diblee, Albert Diblee and William Welles Hollister, the latter of whom sold his portion in 1874 to the Lompoc Valley Land Company. It is from that portion that the present-day Lompoc was established as a temperance colony. The town was originally intended to be called New Vineland, modeled after the temperance colony in New Jersey. The city was incorporated in 1888. The coastal branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad replaced ship transportation around 1900. A paved road linked Lompoc to Buellton, and the rest of California, around 1920. In 1923, the largest peacetime naval loss of ships occurred, just off the coast: the Honda Point Disaster. During the Great Depression, Mission La Purisma Concepcion was restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The W.C. Fields movie The Bank Dick (1940), was set in Lompoc (although the name was mis-pronounced as Lom' poc). During World War II, the coast west of Lompoc was the site of Camp Cooke, a U.S. Army training camp where large units could practice maneuvers.

Lompoc grew slowly until 1958, when the U.S. Air Force announced that the former Camp Cooke would be a test site for the Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, and the first operational base for the Atlas intercontinental-range ballistic missile. Lompoc then began to grow rapidly to provide housing for thousands of civilian and contractor workers employed at what was soon named Vandenberg Air Force Base. Vandenberg Air Force Base was the first missile base of the United States Air Force. The Space Shuttle program was slated to begin launches in the late 1980s. The city experienced a boom in restaurant and hotel construction in the mid 1980s, due to the anticipated influx of tourists coming to see shuttle launches. However, when the Challenger exploded during take-off from Cape Canaveral in 1986, the West Coast Shuttle Program was terminated, leaving Lompoc in a severe recession.

The Lompoc Valley responded to the Shuttle disaster by focusing on tourism as a means of fighting its way through the recession. By focusing on the natural beauty of the Valley, its flower industry, the pristine Central Coast, and by developing a successful downtown mural program, the City of Lompoc has built an excellent tourism industry that is to this day a primary component of the Lompoc economy. Today, the City of Lompoc is dubbed "The City of Arts and Flowers".