“Monlaco” is short for the Montana Land Company, incorporated here in 1904 in order to manage 8,000 acres owned by William Andrews Clark (1839-1925) and his brother J. Ross Clark (1850-1927), namesakes of Clark Avenue. Although the Clarks were originally from Pennsylvania, William made it rich – really rich – off his copper mines in Montana. He even served as U.S. Senator from Montana from 1901 until 1907. (In fact he first bribed his way into the Senate in 1899 but was booted out and had to run a legitimate campaign.) The Clarks’ land here was initially used for growing sugar beets, but after the brothers died and housing became a more profitable proposition, the family decided to develop the property: thus Lakewood was born. (This part of Lakewood was annexed by Long Beach in 1953.) The Clark brothers’ great-nephew Clark Joaquin Bonner Sr. (1889-1947) was very much the father of Lakewood; Monlaco Road was laid out under his watchful eye in 1946, less than a year before he was felled by a stress-induced cerebral hemorrhage.
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