The Los Alamitos Museum will appeal to...

The Los Alamitos Museum will appeal to those who like to prowl through attics, looking at old photographs, award certificates, medals and memorabilia.

The displays lack a central focus, but perhaps that is what gives the museum its charm. Housed in an old adobe brick fire station on Los Alamitos Boulevard, it serves as a community storehouse of assorted memories.

Most items on display date from the late 1800s. Tools from the community’s first woodworking and blacksmith shops are there, including the blacksmith’s well-worn leather apron.

Just across the room is the cross that stood atop the Community Congregational Church, built in 1896. The building was torn down in 1966, and the cross is all that remains. A sign informs visitors that the bullet holes in it “attest to the shooting skills of early Los Alamitos residents.”

The history of the Los Alamitos Sugar Co. is documented in a photographic display. During its prime, the once-thriving industry produced 300,000 sacks of sugar each year, made from locally grown beets. The evolution of Los Alamitos is depicted as well, since the sugar industry, which began in 1897, changed it from a farming community to a boom town. The factory, which employed 300, closed in 1925 after a soil infection ruined the crops.

Also located in the museum is the Los Alamitos Hall of Fame, which resembles a family trophy collection. Included in the displays set up to honor local athletes are tributes to distance swimmer Lynne Cox, diver Pat McCormick and gymnast Cathy Rigby. Cox, who swam the Bering Strait from Alaska to the Soviet Union in 1987, plans to symbolically link the two Germanys in May by swimming the Spree River through East and West Berlin. McCormick and Rigby competed in the Olympic Games and are still active promoters of U.S. Olympic activities.

But the Hall of Fame is not just for athletes. Space is being made to honor Myldred Jones, a Los Alamitos resident who founded Casa De Bienvenidos, a local youth shelter.

An interesting sidelight is the antique medical equipment, including a physician’s portable pharmacy. The black leather kit contains vials of every pharmaceutical compound available at the time of its manufacture in the early 1900s. The kit was taken along on house calls and prescriptions were prepared by the physician at the patient’s bedside. The medical equipment was never used in Los Alamitos but was donated by two local collectors. The old-fashioned stethoscopes, ether masks, surgical needles, extractors and glass hypodermics provide an oddly fascinating display.

Hours: 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Sundays. Special tours available by appointment.

Address: 11062 Los Alamitos Blvd.

Telephone: There is no telephone, but docents can be contacted through Los Alamitos City Hall at (213) 431-3538.