Getting to Know Pico Rivera
How Pico Rivera Sits
Pico Rivera is an independent city in southeastern Los Angeles County, on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Basin about thirteen miles southeast of downtown. Because Pico Rivera is its own city, it sets its own rules on truck access, oversized vehicles, and permits. It is a council-manager city, incorporated in 1958. It covers about 8.9 square miles with somewhere around 62,000 residents.
The land is flat, a former alluvial farm plain. The Rio Hondo bounds it on the west and the San Gabriel River on the east, with the river freeway, the 605, along the southeastern edge. Rosemead and Lakewood Boulevard, State Route 19, runs through the center, with Whittier Boulevard, Washington Boulevard, and Beverly Boulevard among the main surface routes. The 5 and 60 freeways are close by. Pico Rivera borders Downey to the southwest, Santa Fe Springs to the southeast, and Whittier to the east. City of Industry lies to the northeast, Montebello to the northwest, and Commerce to the west.
The housing is mostly postwar single-family homes on regular lots. Apartments line the busier corridors, with industrial districts near the rail lines and the freeway. The population is dense and overwhelmingly Latino, one of the most heavily Mexican-American cities in the county. Households are often large and multi-generational. The Pico Rivera Sports Arena, known for its Mexican rodeos and concerts, is one of the city’s best-known gathering places. It is a reflection of the city’s culture.
From Two Farm Towns to One City
The first people in the area were the Tongva, called Gabrielino by the Spanish who arrived around 1770. Under Mexican rule, most of present-day Pico Rivera lay within Rancho Paso de Bartolo. After the Mexican-American War, the rancher and former governor Pio Pico acquired much of that land. He built his country home, El Ranchito, along the San Gabriel River in the 1850s. The northern community that grew up nearby took his name.
Two separate towns formed on the old ranch land. Rivera, in the south, was laid out as a town site in 1887 when the Santa Fe Railway came through. Its name, Spanish for riverbank, fit a place set between two rivers and known for its walnuts, citrus, and other crops. Pico, in the north, was subdivided into lots starting in 1921 along a second rail line. It carried the name of the old governor. For decades, the two farm towns grew side by side on the rich plain between the Rio Hondo and the San Gabriel River.
After World War II, the demand for housing reached the area, and builders turned the farmland into suburban tracts. The two communities, by then grown close together, decided to join. In early 1958, after a campaign and a public vote, the residents of Pico and Rivera incorporated as a single city, settling on the combined name Pico Rivera. The new city became the sixty-first in Los Angeles County. The decades since brought industry, including a longtime Ford assembly plant. They turned Pico Rivera into the dense residential and industrial city it is today.
What a Pico Rivera Move Really Involves
Pico Rivera is an independent city, so a move here works under city hall rather than the county or the City of Los Angeles. For larger moves, the city issues temporary no-parking permits that hold curb space at the address, and our office arranges and posts these in advance. The permit matters most on the busier corridors and the denser blocks, where parking is tight, and there is little room to leave a truck.
The flat ground is the good news. Pico Rivera sits on a level plain, so most homes have straightforward driveways and street access without the grades and hillside approaches that slow moves in other parts of the county. That keeps the carry simple on the single-family streets. The work that takes planning is the density and the households. Many homes hold large, multi-generational families, with more furniture and belongings than the floor plan suggests. We size the crew and the truck to the actual load rather than the room count.
Apartment moves bring stair carries, parking permits, and building move-in rules. We handle all of that with management ahead of time. For the business and industrial moves near the rail lines and the 605, we work around operating hours and handle the loading and dock access. With the permit, the parking, and the access settled before move day, nothing slows the job once the crew arrives.