^{Torrance High School was founded in 1917 to serve a rapidly growing community. It opened under control of the Los Angeles School District as a combination high school and elementary school.} 

The decade of the 1920s was a period of substantial growth for the Southern California region. The City of Los Angeles had a population of a little more than 500,000 in the 1920 census. By the end of the decade, that population would swell to more than 1 million.

This growth reflected the continued annexation of smaller communities, but was also the result of a continued migration of people to Southern California. The new population was very diverse, including those who had relocated from other parts of the United States as well as immigrants from Europe, Asia and Mexico. They came seeking economic opportunities and a better climate.

The region was experiencing a major economic boom tied to the rapid expansion of petroleum-related industries, including exploration, production and refining. There also was the emerging aviation sector. And the harbor facilities continued to expand, with the Port of Los Angeles surpassing San Francisco as the busiest port on the West Coast.

During this decade, 90 percent of the silent films produced in the United States were made in the Los Angeles area. Plus the region was a major agricultural area, with orange groves, fields of grain, commercial flower fields, cattle ranches and a wide range of other produce and livestock.

Paved streets and highways were replacing dirt roads as the region expanded and more people were buying cars. And the Pacific Electric Railway was still shuttling people across outlying areas.

In these years, Torrance was beginning to bustle as people came into the city for work. It also was becoming a small shopping hub for the South Bay.

Industry had grown slowly, but with the 1920s came the discovery and exploration of the Torrance-Wilmington Oil Field. And soon a forest of oil derricks had popped up across central and south Torrance. The city expanded its borders to take in more land to the south, north and west of the original city boundaries.

And while the oil business was booming, agriculture was still a big part of Torrance. There were fields of vegetables and flowers; dairies; rabbit, chicken, turkey and pig farms; and even a mink farm in the Meadow Park area in the southern part of the city.

Torrance remained fairly isolated from downtown Los Angeles. It was still a long, 20-minute drive or an even longer trip on the Red Car. Pacific Electric Railway had created a special to bring employees from other areas to work in its large service facilities that were located on Crenshaw Boulevard.

And in 1927, General Petroleum purchased a large chunk of land in the northern part of the city to build a refinery that could process crude oil from Kern County. The refinery opened in 1929. It would go through many changes in name and ownership over the years, eventually becoming the Exxon-Mobil Torrance Refinery for several years. It is now the PBF Energy-owned Torrance Refining Co.

While the petroleum industry was coming up in Torrance, there also was a slow expansion of heavy industry, including a glass factory, a rubber plant, Columbia Steel and Rome Cable, among others.

And taking advantage of the ocean and city views from the southern hillsides, developers had a go at creating an upscale housing tract in the 1920s. They envisioned an affluent, French Riviera style of community. But with the development being so isolated from Los Angeles, sales were flat. The project did bring with it finished streets, several large custom homes and the Hollywood Riviera Club at the beach.

As the 1920s closed, Torrance had successfully transitioned into its own City, while also becoming more than the Planned Modern Industrial City envisioned by Jared Sidney Torrance. It was now a community of agriculture, industry and retail, with many small residential areas dotted within its borders. And its population, while still small, had grown from 1,800 in 1921 to more than 7,000 by 1930.