The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
Henry Edwards Huntington was an American railroad magnate and collector of art and rare books. Huntington settled in Los Angeles, where he owned the Pacific Electric Railway as well as substantial real estate interests. In addition to being a businessman and art collector, Huntington was a major booster for Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many places in California are named after him.
Collis Potter Huntington was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. Huntington helped lead and develop other major interstate lines, such as the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O), which he was recruited to help complete. The C&O, completed in 1873, fulfilled a long-held dream of Virginians of a rail link from the James River at Richmond to the Ohio River Valley. The new railroad facilities adjacent to the river there resulted in expansion of the former small town of Guyandotte, West Virginia into part of a new city which was named Huntington in his honor.
The Balboa Peninsula is a neighborhood of the city of Newport Beach, Orange County, California. It is named after Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific from the Americas. Balboa is primarily residential with some commercial areas.
The Port of Los Angeles, also promoted as "America's Port", is a seaport managed by the Los Angeles Harbor Department, a unit of the City of Los Angeles. It occupies 7,500 acres (3,000 ha) of land and water with 43 miles (69 km) of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. The port is located in San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro and Wilmington neighborhoods of Los Angeles, approximately 20 miles (32 km) south of downtown.
Moses Hazeltine Sherman was an American land developer who built the Phoenix Street Railway in Phoenix, Arizona and streetcar systems that would become the core of the Los Angeles Railway and part of the Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, California, and owned and developed property in areas such as the westside of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, California. He also served on the Los Angeles Water Board. He was also known as M. H. Sherman and General M. H. Sherman.
Stephen Mallory White was an American attorney and politician from California. A Democrat, he was most notable for his service as a U.S. Senator from 1893 to 1899.
Phineas Banning was an American businessman, financier and entrepreneur.
San Pedro Bay is an inlet on the Pacific Ocean coast of southern California, United States. It is the site of the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, which together form the fifth-busiest port facility in the world and the busiest in the Americas. The Los Angeles community of San Pedro borders a small portion of the western side of the bay, and shares the name. The city of Long Beach borders the port on the eastern side of the bay. The northern part of the bay, which is the largest part of the port, is bordered by the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington.
Abbot Kinney was an American developer, conservationist, water supply expert and tree expert. Kinney is best known for his "Venice of America" development in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, opened on October 17, 1875, was a steam-powered rail line which ran between the Santa Monica Long Wharf and 5th and San Pedro streets in downtown Los Angeles.
Will Rogers State Beach is a beach park on the Santa Monica Bay, at the Pacific coast of Southern California. Located in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, the beach is owned by the California Department of Parks and Recreation; however, it is managed and maintained by the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors. A section just south of the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Entrada Drive is popular within the LGBT community and is therefore considered Los Angeles' unofficial gay beach; this section is often referred to as Ginger Rogers Beach.
The Santa Monica Air Line was an interurban railroad operated by the Pacific Electric between Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles. It operated between 1909 and 1953. Most of the route is now used by the Metro E Line.
The California Central Railway was incorporated on April 23, 1887, with headquarters in San Bernardino, California. George O. Manchester was the President of the corporation.
The Los Angeles Pacific Railroad (1896−1911) (LAP) was an electric public transit and freight railway system in Los Angeles County, California. At its peak it had 230 miles (370 km) of track extending from Downtown Los Angeles to the Westside, Santa Monica, and the South Bay towns along Santa Monica Bay.
The Long Wharf in Santa Monica, also known as Port Los Angeles or the Mile Long Pier, was an extensive pier wharf constructed by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in Santa Monica Bay from 1892–94. When it opened in 1894, it was the longest wharf in the world, measuring approximately 4,700 feet. It served as a cargo and passenger port until 1913, and in 1919 removal of the wharf started. The wharf, the 1000 foot tip of the pier, was removed by 1920. The remaining 3,600 feet of pier was used as a run down fishing pier until 1933, when the remainder of the pier was removed. One of the major imports to the wharf was lumber from Northern ports, to help in the construction boom in Southern California. Southern Pacific Railroad and the street cars of the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad served the wharf. Los Angeles Pacific Railroad ran passenger trams to the wharf and from midnight to sunrise ran cargo cars.
Port Ballona was situated, from circa 1859 to 1903, near the center of Santa Monica Bay in coastal Los Angeles County, where currently Playa Del Rey and Del Rey Lagoon is located. The name comes from the Mexican La Ballona land grant. Port Ballona consisted of the current Del Rey Lagoon Park but conceptually embraced including the current Ballona Wetlands State Ecological Reserve. The estuarine river, Ballona Creek flows into the marsh and alongside the marsh within earthen levees that are soft-bottomed wetland soil.
The Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad was Southern California's first railroad. Its 21-mile (34 km) line from San Pedro Bay to Los Angeles was built from 1868 to 1869 and began operations on October 26, 1869. The railroad was the brainchild of Phineas Banning and its primary purpose was to transport freight from the port to the city.
The Hueneme, Malibu & Port Los Angeles Railway was a standard-gauge, 15-mile railroad in Malibu, California. It was founded by Frederick Hastings Rindge (1857–1905) and operated on his 13,000-acre ranch along the coast, which encompassed most of what is today Malibu. He struggled for years to keep trespassers off of his land, and feared that the Southern Pacific Company would use the power of eminent domain to build a railroad through his property. This threat animated Rindge to plan his own railroad to thwart the efforts of the Southern Pacific. This was part of his overall effort to keep outsiders off of his ranch and spoil what he considered to be paradise.
The history of Los Angeles began in 1781 when 44 settlers from New Spain established a permanent settlement in what is now Downtown Los Angeles, as instructed by Spanish Governor of Las Californias, Felipe de Neve, and authorized by Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli. After sovereignty changed from Mexico to the United States in 1848, great changes came from the completion of the Santa Fe railroad line from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1885. “Overlanders” flooded in, mostly white Protestants from the Lower Midwest and South.
