Cerritos (Spanish for “Little hills”) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, and is one of several cities that constitute the Gateway Cities of southeast Los Angeles County. It was incorporated on April 24, 1956. As of 2019, the population was 49,859. It is allowance of the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, California Metropolitan Statistical Area designated by the Office of Management and Budget.

Cerritos was originally inhabited by Native Americans belonging to the Tongva (or “People of the Earth”). The Tongva were called the “Gabrieleños” by the Spanish settlers after the friendly Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The Tongva were the largest group of original peoples in Southern California as competently as the most developed in the region.
The Tongva lived off the land, deriving food from the animals or flora and fauna that could be gathered, snared or hunted, and grinding acorns as a staple.

Beginning in the late 15th century, Spanish explorers arrived in the New World and worked their pretension to the California coast in 1542. The colonization process included “civilizing” the original populations in California by establishing various missions. Soon afterward, a town called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (Los Angeles today) would be founded and prosper past the aid of subjects from New Spain and Native American labor.

One soldier, José Manuel Nieto, was granted a large Plan of house by the
Spanish King Carlos III, which he named Rancho Los Nietos. It covered 300,000 acres (120,000 hectares) of what are today the cities of Cerritos, Long Beach, Lakewood, Downey, Norwalk, Santa Fe Springs, part of Whittier, Huntington Beach, Buena Park and Garden Grove.