History of Santa Catalina Island
Catalina was successfully developed into a tourist destination by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr. beginning in the 1920s, with most of the activity centered around the only incorporated city of Avalon, California.
Prior to the modern era, the island was inhabited by people of the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe, who, having had villages near present-day San Pedro and Playa del Rey, regularly traveled back and forth to Catalina for trade.
[citation needed] The Pimugnans had settlements all over the island at one time or another, with their biggest villages being at the Isthmus and at present-day Avalon, Shark/Little Harbor, and Emerald Bay.
[5] The first European to set foot on the island was the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed in the name of the Spanish crown.
[6] On October 7, 1542, he claimed the island for Spain and christened it San Salvador after his ship (Catalina has also been identified as one of the many possible burial sites for Cabrillo).
Over half a century later, another Spanish explorer, Sebastián Vizcaíno, rediscovered the island on the eve of Saint Catherine's day (November 24) in 1602.
By the 1830s, the island's entire native population were either dead or had migrated to the mainland to work in the missions or as ranch hands for the many private landowners.
Pirates found that the island's abundance of hidden coves, as well as its short distance to the mainland and its small population, made it suitable for smuggling activities.
Once used by smugglers of illegal Chinese immigrants, China Point, located on the south western end of Catalina, still bears its namesake.
[11][12][13] Three otter hunters, George Yount, Samuel Prentiss, and Stephen Bouchette, are responsible for the Island's short-lived gold rush.
[5]: 25–26 Word of Yount's promising samples, combined with Bouchette's well-funded claim, brought hopeful miners, and, by 1863, boom towns briefly dotted the hills.
In 1864, the United States federal government, fearing attempts to outfit privateers by Confederate sympathizers in the American Civil War, ended the mining by ordering everyone off the island.
At that time, its location just 20 miles (30 km) from Los Angeles—a city that had reached the population of 50,000 in 1890 and was undergoing a period of enormous growth—was a major factor that contributed to the development of the island into a vacation destination.
The first owner to try to develop Avalon into a resort destination was George Shatto, a real estate speculator from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
[17] Avalon's oldest remaining structure, the distinctive Holly Hill House, was built on a lot purchased from Shatto and his agent C.A.
[5]: 39-40 The Banning brothers fulfilled Shatto's dream of making Avalon a resort community with the construction of numerous tourist facilities.
[2] Although the Bannings' main focus was in Avalon, they also showed great interest in the rest of the island and wanted to introduce other parts of Catalina to the general public.
They did this by paving the first dirt roads into the island's interior, where they built hunting lodges and led stagecoach tours, and by making Avalon's surrounding areas (Lovers Cove, Sugarloaf Point and Descanso Beach) accessible to tourists.
The hotel would be located on Sugarloaf Point, the unique, picturesque, cliff bound peninsula at the north end of Avalon's harbor.
In 1917 the Meteor Company purchased the Chinese pirate ship Ning Po, which was built in 1753, from her owners in Venice, California, and had her towed to the Isthmus at Catalina Island as a combination restaurant tourist attraction.
[19][20] In 1919, due to debt related to the 1915 fire and a general decline in tourism during World War I, the Bannings were forced to sell the island in shares.
Throughout the 1930s the Casino Ballroom hosted many of the biggest names in entertainment, including Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, and Gene Autry.
Greatly due to the assistance of 200 Los Angeles County fire fighters transported by U.S. Marine Corps helicopters and U.S Navy hovercraft, only a few structures were destroyed, yet 4,750 acres (19.2 km2) of wildland burned.
[35][36] In February 2011, water regulators cited the city for letting tens of thousands of gallons of sewage reach the ocean in six spills since 2005.
A report in June 2011 by the Natural Resources Defense Council listed Avalon as having one of the 10 most chronically polluted beaches in the United States.
After the cease and desist order, the city invested an additional $5.7 million on sewer main improvements and inspection and tracking systems.
[38][39] In 2014, the Santa Catalina Island Company was working on a number of redevelopment and remodeling projects, including a spa, aquatic facility, community center, retail stores, new hotel, and 120 new homes.
[43] In early 2024, a study by William Hayes, PhD, who is a professor of biology at Loma Linda University, discovered that rattlesnakes on this island not only have increased defensiveness and decreased tameness, but bit more frequently with high quantities of venom during a standardized protocol.
[44][citation needed] On October 8, 2024, a twin-engine Beechcraft 95 plane crashed shortly after taking off from Catalina Island's Airport in the Sky, killing all five people on board.
Authorities received an emergency SOS message indicating a possible crash, leading search and rescue teams to the site where all occupants were pronounced dead.
