The history of Santa Monica, California, covers the significant events and movements in Santa Monica's past.
Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker (1825–1912) was a wealthy Californio landowner and socialite of Los Angeles. She played an important role in the elite society of Los Angeles and, later, Santa Monica. She was married to two wealthy Anglo-American men over the course of her life, Abel Stearns and then Colonel Robert S. Baker. Like many californias of her time, Arcadia Bandini provided to her Anglo husbands opportunities for entrance into and alliances within the established californio elite society. She was a skilled businesswoman in her own right, as well as a renowned hostess and organizer of balls and other social functions. Through her Bandini family wealth and the wealth of her husbands, Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker amassed an enormous estate and fortune, and upon her death was one of the wealthiest women in America. In her later life, she was considered "the great benefactress of Santa Monica" for her investments in and contributions to the development of the city. Because she had no children and did not leave a will, her death prompted an infamous court battle for control of her estate.
Captain José Antonio Ezequiel Carrillo (1796–1862) was a Californio rancher, officer, and politician in the early years of Mexican Alta California and U.S. California.
Juan José Carrillo was member of one of the early Spanish families, and a prominent figure in early Southern California history.
Rancho Los Alamitos takes its name from an 1834 Mexican partition of the 1784 Rancho Los Nietos, a Spanish concession, covering an area in present-day California's southwestern Los Angeles County and northwestern Orange County. Los Alamitos means the Little Cottonwoods or Poplars in Spanish, after the native Fremont Cottonwood trees there.
Rancho Jurupa was a 40,569-acre (164.18 km2) Mexican land grant in California, United States, that is divided by the present-day counties of Riverside and San Bernardino. The land was granted to Juan Bandini by Governor Juan B. Alvarado in 1838. Located along both banks of the Santa Ana River in southern California, the rancho included much of the land in the present day city of Jurupa Valley, as well as the downtown area in the city of Riverside.
Colonel Robert Symington Baker (1826–1894) was a businessman and landowner from Rhode Island. He came to California in 1849 and engaged in mining supplies business, also as Cook and Baker in San Francisco, Calofornia. Later he became associated with General Beale in the cattle and sheep business in the northern part of the state and in the Tejon area.
Abel Stearns was a trader who came to the Pueblo de Los Angeles, Alta California in 1829 and became a major landowner, cattle rancher and one of the area's wealthiest citizens.
Jonathan Temple, or Don Juan Temple was a cattle rancher who emigrated from Massachusetts in 1828 to settle in Mexican California. There he became a large California rancho landowner and one of the region's wealthiest citizens.
Bell Block was a building in Los Angeles in the U.S. state of California. Situated on the corner of Aliso and Los Angeles streets, it was built in 1845 by Captain Alexander Bell. It was one of the few two-story adobe buildings in the then one-story adobe town of Los Angeles.
Thomas Pascoe (1846/48–1938) was an Englishman who initially worked in the royal navy for 7 years and also witnessed the opening of the Suez canal. After he left the naval service, he migrated to USA, where he became a hotel developer and proprietor in California.
Hall of the Amigos del País was located in Los Angeles, California. Erected in 1844, it was the first social hall or club house ever built on the North American Pacific Coast. It was the hall of the Sociedad Económica de los Amigos del País, a society or club made up of the leading citizens of the town, both native and foreign born, who, during the 1840s, formed a group with the dual purposes of providing pensions and stimulating the reading of literature.
Round House was a landmark building on the west side of Main Street, below Third in downtown Los Angeles, California.
Carrillo House was a historic house in Los Angeles, California, US. The Pico House now stands on its lot.
Edward Nathaniel McDonald was a US businessman, the principal stockholder and president of the Globe Mills, and president of McDonald Grain and Milling Company.
Maurice Harris Newmark was a US grocer and writer from Los Angeles, California.
Robert Brown Young was a Canadian-born architect who designed buildings in California.
Mariana W. de Coronel was an American collector of Native American and Mexican curios and antiques. These were gathered during the course of many years, the largest and most valuable collection of historical materials of its kind in the United States.
During the 1880s and 1890s the central business district (CBD) of Los Angeles was located around Spring and Main streets from just south of the Los Angeles Plaza to Second Street. Of the old CBD not a single building remains except at the extreme southern edge below 2nd Street, as all structures from this period were razed to make way for the construction of the Civic Center during the 1930s–1950s.
The Old Santa Monica Forestry Station is the nation's first experimental forestry station, built in 1887. The Old Santa Monica Forestry Station was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.840) on March 20, 1970. Old Santa Monica Forestry Station is located at Rustic Canyon in Los Angeles in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California in Los Angeles County. The site is south of what is now called Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. In 1971 the state placed a marker near the entrance of the Rustic Canyon Recreation Center at the NW corner of Latimer and Hilltree Roads, at 601 Latimer Road, Los Angeles, CA 90402. This location is in what is now called Pacific Palisades. The hills and canyons around the Santa Monica Canyon were a land boom in the late 1880s.
