Area code 562 Information & Area code 562 Links at HealthHaven.com

Map of California area codes in blue (and border states) with 562 in red

Area code 562 is a California telephone area code that was split from area code 310 on January 25, 1997. It is the area code for much of the Gateway Cities region of southeastern Los Angeles County, California, including Long Beach and surrounding cities such as Cerritos, Lakewood, Pico Rivera, Downey, Norwalk, and Whittier.

[edit] History

Originally this area was part of the 213 area code. When the first split of 213 happened (on November 2, 1991), the region became area code 310, then split again to become the 562 area code.

[edit] County anomaly

One anomaly in this area code is that all of it is in Los Angeles County except for the cities of Seal Beach and Los Alamitos, which are in the very northwest corner of the Orange County coastline, portions of the city of La Habra, and the very small and northwest part of the city of Brea in the very northwest corner of inland Orange County. These exceptions could exist because, at the time of 310's creation, Pacific Bell (now AT&T) was the primary telephone company for most of Southern California, whereas this region's primary telephone company was GTE (now Verizon). In fact, when this region was originally split from the 213 area code to become the 310 area code, Pacific Bell, being the primary local telephone company for this area (and had authority to decide what codes stayed in 213 and which ones moved), chose to move all of GTE's area code 213 exchanges into the 310 area code.