Avalon is the only incorporated city on Santa Catalina Island, in the California Channel Islands, and the southernmost city in Los Angeles County. The city is a resort community with the waterfront dominated by tourism-oriented businesses. The older parts of the town on the valley floor consist primarily of small houses and two and three-story buildings in various traditional architectural styles.
Wilmington is a neighborhood in the Harbor region of Los Angeles, California, covering 9.14 square miles (23.7 km2).
The Port of Los Angeles 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. Promoted as "America's Port", 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.
The first USS Blue Ridge (ID-2432) was a steamship in the United States Navy. The ship was named for the Blue Ridge Mountains.
William Mills Wrigley Jr. was an American chewing gum industrialist. He was founder of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company in 1891.
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.
Two Harbors, colloquially known as "The Isthmus", is a small unincorporated community island village on the island of Santa Catalina Island, California, with a population of 298. It is the second center of population on the island, besides the city of Avalon. It is mainly a resort village. It has only one restaurant, one hotel and one general store. The village has about 150 permanent residents who live on the isthmus year-round. One notable feature was the one-room schoolhouse which closed in 2014.
The Alaska Steamship Company was formed on August 3, 1894. While it originally set out to ship passengers and fishing products, the Alaska Steamship Company began shipping mining equipment, dog sleds, and cattle at the outbreak of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. The company was purchased by the Alaska Syndicate and merged with the Northwestern Steamship Company in 1909, but retained its name, and the fleet was expanded to 18 ships. During World War II, the government took over the company's ships. When the war ended, the company struggled to compete with the new Alaska Highway for passengers and freight. It discontinued passenger service altogether in 1954 and shut down operations in 1971.
The Pacific Steamship Company was a US freight and passenger shipping company that operated between 1916 and 1936. The company was formed by the merger of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company and the Pacific-Alaska Navigation Company and was a direct competitor to the Alaska Steamship Company in the Alaska-Seattle shipping business. Pacific Steamship Co. owned and operated The Admiral Line and The Admiral Oriental Line. American Mail Line worked with the Admiral Oriental Line.
SS Catalina, also known as The Great White Steamer, was a 301-foot steamship built in 1924 that provided passenger service on the 26-mile passage between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island from 1924 to 1975. According to the Steamship Historical Society of America, Catalina has carried more passengers than any other vessel anywhere. From August 25, 1942 until April 22, 1946 the ship served as the Army troop ferry U.S. Army FS-99 at the San Francisco Port of Embarkation transporting more than 800,000 troops and other military personnel between embarkation camps and the departure piers. After a period of service as a floating discothèque, the ship ran aground on a sandbar in Ensenada Harbor in 1997 and partially sank on the spot. It was scrapped in 2009.
Santa Catalina Island is a rocky island off the coast of Southern California in the Gulf of Santa Catalina. The island name is often shortened to Catalina Island or just Catalina. The island is 22 mi (35 km) long and 8 mi (13 km) across at its greatest width. The island is located about 29 mi (47 km) south-southwest of Long Beach, California. The highest point on the island is Mount Orizaba. Geologically, Santa Catalina is part of the Channel Islands of California archipelago and is the easternmost of the Channel Islands. Politically, Catalina Island is part of Los Angeles County in District 4. Most of the land on the island is unincorporated.
San Pedro via Dominguez was a 25.39-mile (40.86 km) interurban transport route, part of the Pacific Electric system in Greater Los Angeles. Its termini were the Pacific Electric Building in Downtown Los Angeles and San Pedro in the south.
Catalina Express is an American passenger ferry service that operates scheduled trips between Santa Catalina Island and mainland California. The company began service in 1981 with a single sixty-passenger vessel. As of 2016, the Catalina Express fleet includes eight high-speed vessels that can make the roughly 30-mile (48 km) crossing in about an hour.
David Malcolm Renton, known as "DM", was a builder and business executive in southern California. He is best known for his Craftsman style homes in Pasadena and for the construction of the Casino Ballroom and other homes on Catalina Island in the early 1900s. Renton was influential in the development of Catalina Island under William Wrigley Jr., serving as vice-president of the Santa Catalina Island Company and the Wilmington Transportation Company from 1919 to his retirement in 1936. He also served as president of the Wilmington Catalina Airlines from 1931 to 1942.
Cuttings Wharf is an unincorporated community in Napa County, California. It lies at an elevation of 7 feet. Cuttings Wharf is located on the Napa River, 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of Napa Junction.
The history of human activity on Santa Catalina Island, California begins with the Native Americans who called the island Pimugna or Pimu and referred to themselves as Pimugnans or Pimuvit. The first Europeans to arrive on Catalina claimed it for the Spanish Empire. Over the years, territorial claims to the island transferred to Mexico and then to the United States. During this time, the island was sporadically used for smuggling, otter hunting, and gold-digging. 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. Since the 1970s, most of the island has been administered by the Catalina Island Conservancy.
The SS Philippines Victory was the fifth Victory ship built during World War II. She was launched by the California Shipbuilding Company on March 11, 1944, and completed on May 9, 1944. She was built in 113 days under the Emergency Shipbuilding program.
Captain Phineas Banning Blanchard (1879-1962) was a tall ship sea captain, among the last of the American merchant trade in the age of sail.
The Catalina Dock Line is a former Pacific Electric interurban railway line in Los Angeles County, California. The service began primarily for holiday travel but was expanded to serve dock workers during World War II. It ran between Downtown Los Angeles and Terminal Island.
Hamilton Cove Seaplane Base was a seaplane base on the Catalina Island, California from 1922 to 1947. The Seaplane Base was located just north of the City of Avalon, California in Hamilton Cove. Pacific Marine Airways operated out of the base with service between Wilmington, Los Angeles and Catalina Island from 1922 to 1928. This was a popular vacation route to the island and had 3,500 passengers in 1927, running two 20 minutes rides a day. Pacific Marine Airways was started by Foster Curry, Curry Village in Yosemite National Park was his previous project. Pacific Marine Airways started operations with World War 1 Curtiss HS-2L flying boats converted to 6 passenger planes. The amphibious seaplanes would land just offshore and then taxi up a ramp to the "airport". In 1928 Pacific Marine Airways switched to Loening C-2 seaplanes and moved from Wilmington to Mines Field now LAX. In 1928 Western Air Express took over operations and moved operations to an airport they owned, Vail Airport in Montebello, California. In 1931 Western Air Express service switched to using the 10 passenger Douglas Dolphin, a twin-engined seaplane. In 1931 the seabase was taken over by Wilmington-Catalina Airlines which was owned by the Wrigley family, which owned much of the island. With the start of World War 2 all civilian air traffic stopped. All Catalina Island airports were shut down in September 1942. The US Coast Guard took over the Hamilton Cove Seaplane Base. In 1945, after World War 2 the Hamilton Cove Seaplane Base reopened but did not offer regularly scheduled flights. In 1947 the Hamilton Cove Seaplane Base closed as there was now a land-based airport, Catalina Airport and a new seabase in Descanso Bay south of Avalon, home of the Saint Catherine Hotel (1918-1966). The hangar was moved to the land airport and all other traces of the terminal at Hamilton Cove were demolished for the condominium complex built in the early 1970s, the Hamilton Cove condominiums.
United States
