The Centinela Valley Adobe is the birthplace of Inglewood. The Adobe was built in 1834 by Ignacio Machado as his ranch house. The oldest standing building in the Centinela Valley, it is the core of a historical museum.

The Centinela Adobe Complex consists of the Adobe, the Daniel Freeman Land Office built in 1887 and the Centinela Valley Heritage and Research Center. Over 10,000 photographs, books and other memorabilia chronicling the evolution of Centinela Valley are housed in the facility, largely mementos from Daniel Freeman’s mansion built in 1888.

The Freeman Land Office is an important role in early Inglewood. The Land Office was founded in 1818 as an independent agency of the United States government. When California joined the union in 1850, much of its lands were under land grants from Spanish royalty and their agents working in Baja and Alta California. The Land Office was an important cultural and literal landmark in the Centinela Valley.

Today the Freeman Land Office displays unusual and diverse materials from the region's history. Display highlights include the area’s first poultry colony, first domesticated chinchilla farm, Freeman's brick manufacturers, the birthplace of aerospace defense and exploration and other South Bay businesses.

The Walter Haskell Research Center, also known as the Heritage Center, gathered remnants from Freeman’s mansion after its 1972 demolition. Construction of Interstate 405 severed easy access to the Adobe from Inglewood. The property is owned by the City Inglewood though it has a Los Angeles mailing address. The Museum is managed by the Historical Society of the Centinela Valley and staffed by volunteers.

The Centinela Valley Adobe Complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.