Los Angeles County Fire Museum
The Los Angeles County Fire Museum is a public museum in Los Angeles County, California dedicated to the history of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The museum’s collection includes 60 historic fire engines ranging from the 1860s to recently departed units. Its public displays are held on the ground level of the Bellflower Mayne Events Center, 16400 Bellflower Blvd, Bellflower, CA. The Museum is open four days a week.
The Flora Vista site is currently the Museum’s restoration shop. This is not open to the public.
This collection includes fire engines driven by men, horse drawn steam fire engines, Los Angeles County Fire Department equipment dating back to the 1920s, the “Disneyland” fire engine, Model T fire engines, and 1950s fire engines. The enormous collection of rigs is frequently altered as the Museum directors display various rigs from the shop and at South Gate.
The most notable exhibits are the featured vehicles of the fictional Fire Station 51, Squad 51, and both trucks named Engine 51 from the 1970s television series, Emergency!
From 2008 to mid-2018, the museum was located at 9834 Flora Vista St in Bellflower, California, and now houses its public collection on the bottom floor of the Mayne Events Center at 16400 Bellflower Blvd in Bellflower.
County of Los Angeles Fire Museum Association
The County of Los Angeles Fire Museum Association is the official entity in charge of the Museum’s assets.
In the mid-1970s, two Los Angeles County Firefighters founded the County of Los Angeles Fire Museum Association. By the end of the 1980s, our Museum had been properly organized under the laws of the state of California as a non-profit public benefit corporation.
The Association bought and still retains a space in the LACo Fire Department Headquarters in Los Angeles, storage facilities at the Department’s Air facility in Pacoima, and a big warehouse in South Gate. Around the year 2000, the Association rented a historic auto repair shop from the city of Bellflower, California. This facility served as the Association’s initial public face, allowing us to open to the public for the first time.
The City of Bellflower joined the Association in July of 2018. The Exhibition Museum is located on the ground floor of Bellflower’s MAYNE EVENTS CENTER. The auto body shop building was purchased by The Association the same year and now houses the Los Angeles County Fire Museum’s “The Shop,” where all of the hard restoration work is currently done.
Next Point of Interest: Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts