COMPTON, a city of Los Angeles county, California, U.S.A., midway between Los Angeles and Long Beach. It is served by the Southern Pacific and the Pacific Electric railways. In 192o the population was 1,498; in 193o it was 12,516 by the Federal census. Compton is in a market-gardening region, and is surrounded by producing oil wells, oil storage farms and refineries. The joint harbour of Los Angeles and Long Beach is but a few miles dis tant. On the southern border of the city is the new freight classification yard of the Southern Pacific Company. The city is a residential suburb, and it also has substantial manufacturing industries of its own, whose products include rubber tyres, water bottles and fruit jars, ladders, tools and equipment for oil wells, and cooling towers for gasolene plants. Compton was founded about 1868, was incorporated as a city of the sixth class in 1888 and as a city of the fifth class in 1925. The new charter provides for a planning commission and for a city-manager form of government.