![]() “Everything ready for Empire Day exercises thousands will visit this city,” read one headline. Not all participants were from Long Beach. On May 24, 1913, disaster struck during Empire Day festivities.Īn important holiday to expatriate Brits and Canadians, Empire Day celebrated both Queen Victoria’s birthday and soldiers who had died in service of the British Empire. Opened in 1904, the pier proved to be the place to hold celebrations like the Queen of the Sea Pageant and the ever-popular Pier Day. The most recent was the Rainbow Pier, but it was hardly our town’s first. Over the years, Long Beach had several piers in the downtown area. A manmade disaster almost bankrupted the city, spurred a popular movement for a tax increase, and called attention to issues like building codes, bonded indebtedness and what kinds of tidelands development the city should be involved in, and ultimately bringing the city kicking and screaming into the 20 th Century. ![]() It was 95 years ago this month when Long Beach grew up. ![]()
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