Long Beach has islands. Four of them. And you can clearly see them as you fly into the airport (LGB) or traverse Ocean Avenue. But these are artificial islands. Wonderful fakes, designed to vibe palm trees, waterfalls, blue-and-white condos and more. At night, the islands sparkle in Long Beach Harbor with colorful lights. Amazingly, they are all an illusion. But why?
It starts with oil. The “black gold” upon which much of Southern California sits. The La Brea Tar Pits (seen below in 1910) are just a clue to to the existence and importance of oil in this part of the state.
Back in 1932, the Wilmington Oil Field was discovered. And wouldn’t you know? It was the third largest oil field in the nation, stretching off the coast of Southern California from the middle of the San Pedro Bay, through Long Beach, to just east of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The city of Long Beach sits atop the riches of this gigantic reserve.
But how to drill the oil? Long Beach folks did not want oil “pump jacks” planted in their yards and neighborhoods. These “oil horses” (as so many of us local kids called them) were dotted throughout Southern California. 
Hundreds of them, bobbing away in backyards, empty lots, shopping centers, even school yards. Many of them pump away to this day.
The massing and noise of oil drilling machinery in the adjacent city of Signal Hill was exactly what Long Beach did not want.
And so Long Beach oil drilling was banned via referendum in 1952. Residents had huge concerns about coastal land “subsidence” (sinking) and a strong aversion to looking like “Porcupine Hill” (the aforementioned Signal Hill) next door. Debates about oil drilling in Long Beach would continue for years, of course. After all, Long Beach residents really did want the revenue that all that untapped oil would bring into the city coffers. But what to do?
In 1962, Long Beach voters finally took a step and approved legislation allowing for the “controlled” exploration and extraction of oil and gas reserves in the Wilmington Oil Field. But the voters were also smart. They had a “beautification clause” included, mandating that all oil industry operations be disguised and that sounds of drilling/refining be masked. Later, when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that the State of California had the right to begin offshore drilling along its coastline, the game was on.
In 1965, four circular islands were constructed in the Long Beach Harbor, designed to tap into the Wilmington Oil Field underwater and offshore. These islands, originally called THUMS, were named for the parent oil companies who would lease and operate them: Texaco, Humble (now Exxon), Union, Mobile, and Shell. They were 10-12 acres each and cleverly designed in a bowl-like shape to contain runoff that might contaminate the surrounding sea waters below.
Two years later, in 1967, THUMS was dubbed the “Astronaut Islands.” Each island was named for one of four American astronauts who had lost their lives while in service to the nation. They were Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, who were tragically killed in a fiery accident during a pre-launch test for the 1967 Apollo 1 mission at Cape Kennedy, Florida; and Ted Freeman, the first U. S. astronaut ever to perish in active duty. This was especially fitting given Long Beach’s long association with the aerospace industry.
Details of how these artificial islands were engineered–and then so cleverly disguised by a Disneyland designer, Joseph Linesch, and his staff–is a tale unto itself. One excellent article, “The Tale Behind Long Beach’s ‘Resort’ Oil Drilling Islands” (Brian Addison, 2019), fills in a lot of the technical and biographical details about the whole successful undertaking. Another great article, “Long Beach’s Deceptive Islands” (Hadley Meares, CURBED LA, 2018), discusses the design philosophy of Linesch in more depth, noting that:
“The plans for the islands sprung out of the growing pains of environmentalism that were a major factor in industrial design during the 1960s.
Called the ‘aesthetic mitigation of technology’ by one historian, it sought to conceal and minimize the inconveniences and ugliness that industrial plants produced, without actually attacking the root problems of production and pollution.”
On another note, “The Urban Oil Fields of Los Angeles” (The Atlantic Monthly, 2014) features fabulous images of the crazy side-by-side relationship of So Cal neighborhoods with local oil fields and drilling. Pump jacks (aka those “oil horses.” “nodding donkeys,” or “grasshoppers” in Angeleno speak) abound in these photos taken throughout the Southland.
In 2009, Huell Howser videoed an in-depth visit to THUMS/Astronaut Islands in a three-part episode for his much-loved “California’s Gold” TV show. I highly recommend watching these for a really full picture of the cleverness involved in camouflaging the oil drilling islands. Links are as follows: “Oil Islands, Long Beach, Part 1” . . .“Part 2” . . . and “Part 3.”
So scan the surf for the Astronaut Islands the next time you are in Long Beach. They are visible day or night. Visitors are not allowed, but you can certainly gaze from afar. In time, if/when the oil taps out, the islands may become more accessible to the public as sea-encircled parks.