Long before Rancho Palos Verdes became the newest city on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, it was part of Rancho de los Palos Verdes, a seemingly worthless patch of oceanfront hill covered in brush fit only for shore whalers, smugglers, and cattle. Through forfeiture and foreclosure, the Bixby family from Maine acquired the peninsula and made the land profitable by diversifying-ranching, sharecropping with American field farmers, and renting land to Japanese flower and vegetable growers. New York financier Frank Vanderlip realized in 1912 the real estate potential of the hill's dramatic vistas and rugged cliffs and canyons. Over the years, three cities were created as tree-covered havens for horses and wildlife-islands of calm. But danger to this lifestyle lay in overdevelopment from the Los Angeles County-owned land encircling them. This, then, is the story of the fourth city, Rancho Palos Verdes, created in 1973 from county land and dedicated to keeping the peninsula green and underdeveloped, as Vanderlip envisioned.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Title: JOHN BOGERT: A sepia-toned look at a special place by the ocean
Author: John Bogert
Publisher: The Daily Breeze
Date: 11/14/09
I wasn't going to write another word about yet another Arcadia Publishing book of local history.
By local I mean local cut into razor-thin slices. Hyper-local like "Famous Ivy Patches of Torrance," local until the very meaning of local disappears beneath the ever-decreasing subject matter until I'm half waiting for somebody to come in with a "South Bay Kitchen Sinks, 1949 to 1951."
Then Ginger Clark showed up with her pictorial history book "Rancho Palos Verdes" with me still swearing I wasn't going to write a word about it.
Then I start looking at the pictures in its 127 pages, at photos of the Palos Verdes Peninsula the way it was when the Tongva lived here, the way it was when Jotham Bixby's cattle grazed its dry, undulating folds, the way it looked when Frank Vanderlip bought the place sight unseen, the way it looked when he finally saw it and acted like a man thunderstruck and, well, here I am writing.
Worse, I'm wishing the same thing that I always wish when one of these always-sepia-toned (www.arcadiapublishing.com) books comes my way. I wish that I could live in those places. Specifically, in every portion of the South Bay as it was before we loved it into small lots and crowded it silly.
But let's not dwell there. Actually, we can't dwell there, starting with the picture on the book's cover, the vanished Palos Verdes College as it looked in 1947 on ground above Portuguese Bend.
It no longer exists. Or no longer exists in exactly that way, with cool people in riding outfits and white rail fences and open space as far as the camera lens can see.
Then there's Clark's enthusiasm. Born and raised in Redondo Beach and widowed in 1993 when her husband died racing a vintage Lotus, she has been a writer most of her life.
And most of that life, 66 years of it, has been spent - except for a season of soybean growing in Washington state after her husband's passing - in the city she writes about in the book.
Arcadia guy and former Breeze reporter Jerry Roberts found Clark while casting about for someone to do a book on a city with a street (Palos Verdes Drive South) that has been moving six to eight feet a year since the Portuguese Bend slide began in 1956.
"After he went through all the good people he found me," jokes Clark, who started out to write a single story about this horseshoe-shaped city only to find something quite different. "It turned out to be a set of stories that turned into a tale of people shaped by the land."
And I should mention that while I was being all "Oh, no!" about another history book, I learned that Portuguese Bend is named for the Portuguese-run shore whaling camp that operated during the yearly gray whale migrations from 1864 to 1884.
Naturally, you know that Abalone Cove was a Tongva midden, or dump. I didn't know that either. Nor did I know that Capt. George Vancouver named Point Vincente after a friar at Mission Buenaventura, a name that was inexplicably changed in 1933 to Point Vicente by the Pacific Geographical Society.
Oh, and the entire P.V. Peninsula used to be an island.
OK, so I didn't know an awful lot about the land Frank Vanderlip bought in 1913 from the Bixby family with an eye toward turning it into 100-acre estates with an adjacent hillside artisans village, a yacht club and all the other grand, robber-baron amenities that would have kept acreage absolutely unlike it is.
In the case of RPV, "the fourth city" that didn't become a city until 1973, we have a great number of people who came looking for a place away from a great number of people.
That seems to be the case from the Bixby brothers, through all the early years when - and the photos are quite wonderful - horse-drawn threshers worked land that farmer Yukio Motoike called "the most beautiful place on Earth."
And it was (and is still) beautiful, even in black and white, even as the pictured clothing goes from the top hat and minks of the Vanderlips to the cloth caps of farmers and the timeless, ever-present smiles of children gathered at Malaga Cove School and Abalone Cove.
"I could see why Frank Vanderlip fell in love with this place," said the blue-eyed ham radio enthusiast and mother to two stepchildren.
And it was Frank Vanderlip, followed by son Kelvin (husband to the recently passed-on Elin Vanderlip), who fostered a certain quality of life that was ultimately saved by the anti-development forces of the 1960s. This largely on 8,500 acres of undeveloped land owned for a time in the mid-1950s by the parents of Ethel Skakel, later Ethel (Mrs. Robert) Kennedy.
Rough people, working people, famous people, artistic people (actor Charles Laughton lived in RPV) and aerospace people crowd the narrative. With the later group arriving in the 1960s looking for good schools and a fantastic place in the sun for under $60,000.
And it's so odd to see pictured their new dream houses scraped into raw land along with the coming and going of Marineland, a move that was never forgiven by longtime city residents who saw the giant aquarium's sea mammals as extended family.
So it's fitting, I think, that the writer of such a well-presented saga should be so excited by it.
"It's a special place, special for its proximity to the ocean and special for the people it drew," said Clark, who will be signing books at Williams' Book Store in San Pedro on the evening of Dec. 3. "It's the place where I plan to spend the rest of my life."
Title: Tim Grobaty: Palos Verdes Peninsula history is a whale of a story
Author: Staff Writer
Publisher: Contra Costa Times
Date: 11/4/09
PV'S PAST IN PICS: We were 10 in 1965 (we'll spare you the math: we're 46), when Marineland was making its biggest splash on Long Point, one of the many promontories of Palos Verdes Peninsula stabbing out into the deep blue sea.
For many on both sides of the bridges, it was the happiest place on Earth, a spectacular location filled with a waterworld of brilliant animals, the most amusing and amazing being the killer double bill of performing orcas Orky and Corky - and what happened to Marineland and Orky and Corky is one of the unprettiest stories to come out of the generally gorgeous Rancho Palos Verdes history.
It's a long yarn, but the shortest version we can come up with is that in 1986, the publishing giant Harcourt Brace Javanovich bought Marineland and, as is so often the case in these deals, Harcourt swore nothing would change, other than improvements to make the park as cool as the company's San Diego park Sea World.
But there were no improvements, and the big change was made sometime around midnight in mid-January 1987, when trucks came in and under cover of night and hauled Orky and Corky down the coast to Sea World, which needed the breeding pair to ensure a future supply of Shamus and tourist dollars.
And more changes: The company fired the Marineland employees, closed the park, transferred the beloved Bubbles pilot whale down south and during the course of these changes, seven Marineland animals died.
To this day you don't say anything that rhymes with "Harcourt" on the peninsula.
The whole Marineland saga, from start to now, is thoroughly illustrated and briskly told in "Rancho Palos Verdes," a new book due out Nov. 16 from Arcadia Publishing, makers of fine pictorial histories, including its "Images of America" series, of which this is part.
Rancho Palos Verdes has a more colorful history than most of the dozens of local burgs that "Images" has covered. In the book, we start with PV's early days when the Long Beach pioneering Bixby boys owned the entire peninsula, save for San Pedro. Jotham Bixby sold the 16,000-acre peninsula in 1913 for $150 million.
The pictorial covers the peninsula from its early days of whaling stations and sheep ranches to military installations and all the way up to its swanky status as containing some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America.
DOWN BY THE SEA SHORE: Being published appropriately concurrently with "Rancho Palos Verdes" is another Arcadia Images of America book, "Cabrillo Beach Coastal Park," detailing that stretch that hugs the Palos Verdes Peninsula's eastern coast and winds around into the wilder south side with its wondrous though now sadly over-harvested tide pools of Point Fermin.
The book shows the sort of savage pre-sustainable days of abalone hunting in the early 1900s, but it mostly celebrates the glories of the coast and its still-rich sea life, plus the early days of marine biology as well as fishing, recreation and a breakwater that actually enhances the area rather than rendering it a relatively lifeless pond. More space is given to sea creatures than human pioneers here, from the seals, sea lions, dolphin and whales that still frolic just yards off the coast, the intertidal sand dollars, sea urchins, nudibranchs and crabs. And, of course, Cabrillo Beach's famous grunion.
BACKGROUND: Both "Rancho Palos Verdes" and "Cabrillo Beach Coastal Park" make great use of historical photographs.
The Palos Verdes book was put together by Rancho Palos Verdes resident Ginger Garnett Clark, using photos from the Palos Verdes Library, the Point Vicente Interpretive Center and private collections of local residents.
The Cabrillo volume was compiled and written by Cabrillo Marine Aquarium director Mike Schaadt and the facility's exhibits director Ed Mastro, using the aquarium's archives and those of the San Pedro Historical Society, the Port of Los Angeles, the L.A. Maritime Museum and private collections.
The books retail for $21.99 each and are available at local sellers, online booksellers or through the publisher at www.arcadia
Author: John Bogert
Publisher: The Daily Breeze
Date: 11/14/09
I wasn't going to write another word about yet another Arcadia Publishing book of local history.
By local I mean local cut into razor-thin slices. Hyper-local like "Famous Ivy Patches of Torrance," local until the very meaning of local disappears beneath the ever-decreasing subject matter until I'm half waiting for somebody to come in with a "South Bay Kitchen Sinks, 1949 to 1951."
Then Ginger Clark showed up with her pictorial history book "Rancho Palos Verdes" with me still swearing I wasn't going to write a word about it.
Then I start looking at the pictures in its 127 pages, at photos of the Palos Verdes Peninsula the way it was when the Tongva lived here, the way it was when Jotham Bixby's cattle grazed its dry, undulating folds, the way it looked when Frank Vanderlip bought the place sight unseen, the way it looked when he finally saw it and acted like a man thunderstruck and, well, here I am writing.
Worse, I'm wishing the same thing that I always wish when one of these always-sepia-toned (www.arcadiapublishing.com) books comes my way. I wish that I could live in those places. Specifically, in every portion of the South Bay as it was before we loved it into small lots and crowded it silly.
But let's not dwell there. Actually, we can't dwell there, starting with the picture on the book's cover, the vanished Palos Verdes College as it looked in 1947 on ground above Portuguese Bend.
It no longer exists. Or no longer exists in exactly that way, with cool people in riding outfits and white rail fences and open space as far as the camera lens can see.
Then there's Clark's enthusiasm. Born and raised in Redondo Beach and widowed in 1993 when her husband died racing a vintage Lotus, she has been a writer most of her life.
And most of that life, 66 years of it, has been spent - except for a season of soybean growing in Washington state after her husband's passing - in the city she writes about in the book.
Arcadia guy and former Breeze reporter Jerry Roberts found Clark while casting about for someone to do a book on a city with a street (Palos Verdes Drive South) that has been moving six to eight feet a year since the Portuguese Bend slide began in 1956.
"After he went through all the good people he found me," jokes Clark, who started out to write a single story about this horseshoe-shaped city only to find something quite different. "It turned out to be a set of stories that turned into a tale of people shaped by the land."
And I should mention that while I was being all "Oh, no!" about another history book, I learned that Portuguese Bend is named for the Portuguese-run shore whaling camp that operated during the yearly gray whale migrations from 1864 to 1884.
Naturally, you know that Abalone Cove was a Tongva midden, or dump. I didn't know that either. Nor did I know that Capt. George Vancouver named Point Vincente after a friar at Mission Buenaventura, a name that was inexplicably changed in 1933 to Point Vicente by the Pacific Geographical Society.
Oh, and the entire P.V. Peninsula used to be an island.
OK, so I didn't know an awful lot about the land Frank Vanderlip bought in 1913 from the Bixby family with an eye toward turning it into 100-acre estates with an adjacent hillside artisans village, a yacht club and all the other grand, robber-baron amenities that would have kept acreage absolutely unlike it is.
In the case of RPV, "the fourth city" that didn't become a city until 1973, we have a great number of people who came looking for a place away from a great number of people.
That seems to be the case from the Bixby brothers, through all the early years when - and the photos are quite wonderful - horse-drawn threshers worked land that farmer Yukio Motoike called "the most beautiful place on Earth."
And it was (and is still) beautiful, even in black and white, even as the pictured clothing goes from the top hat and minks of the Vanderlips to the cloth caps of farmers and the timeless, ever-present smiles of children gathered at Malaga Cove School and Abalone Cove.
"I could see why Frank Vanderlip fell in love with this place," said the blue-eyed ham radio enthusiast and mother to two stepchildren.
And it was Frank Vanderlip, followed by son Kelvin (husband to the recently passed-on Elin Vanderlip), who fostered a certain quality of life that was ultimately saved by the anti-development forces of the 1960s. This largely on 8,500 acres of undeveloped land owned for a time in the mid-1950s by the parents of Ethel Skakel, later Ethel (Mrs. Robert) Kennedy.
Rough people, working people, famous people, artistic people (actor Charles Laughton lived in RPV) and aerospace people crowd the narrative. With the later group arriving in the 1960s looking for good schools and a fantastic place in the sun for under $60,000.
And it's so odd to see pictured their new dream houses scraped into raw land along with the coming and going of Marineland, a move that was never forgiven by longtime city residents who saw the giant aquarium's sea mammals as extended family.
So it's fitting, I think, that the writer of such a well-presented saga should be so excited by it.
"It's a special place, special for its proximity to the ocean and special for the people it drew," said Clark, who will be signing books at Williams' Book Store in San Pedro on the evening of Dec. 3. "It's the place where I plan to spend the rest of my life."
Title: Tim Grobaty: Palos Verdes Peninsula history is a whale of a story
Author: Staff Writer
Publisher: Contra Costa Times
Date: 11/4/09
PV'S PAST IN PICS: We were 10 in 1965 (we'll spare you the math: we're 46), when Marineland was making its biggest splash on Long Point, one of the many promontories of Palos Verdes Peninsula stabbing out into the deep blue sea.
For many on both sides of the bridges, it was the happiest place on Earth, a spectacular location filled with a waterworld of brilliant animals, the most amusing and amazing being the killer double bill of performing orcas Orky and Corky - and what happened to Marineland and Orky and Corky is one of the unprettiest stories to come out of the generally gorgeous Rancho Palos Verdes history.
It's a long yarn, but the shortest version we can come up with is that in 1986, the publishing giant Harcourt Brace Javanovich bought Marineland and, as is so often the case in these deals, Harcourt swore nothing would change, other than improvements to make the park as cool as the company's San Diego park Sea World.
But there were no improvements, and the big change was made sometime around midnight in mid-January 1987, when trucks came in and under cover of night and hauled Orky and Corky down the coast to Sea World, which needed the breeding pair to ensure a future supply of Shamus and tourist dollars.
And more changes: The company fired the Marineland employees, closed the park, transferred the beloved Bubbles pilot whale down south and during the course of these changes, seven Marineland animals died.
To this day you don't say anything that rhymes with "Harcourt" on the peninsula.
The whole Marineland saga, from start to now, is thoroughly illustrated and briskly told in "Rancho Palos Verdes," a new book due out Nov. 16 from Arcadia Publishing, makers of fine pictorial histories, including its "Images of America" series, of which this is part.
Rancho Palos Verdes has a more colorful history than most of the dozens of local burgs that "Images" has covered. In the book, we start with PV's early days when the Long Beach pioneering Bixby boys owned the entire peninsula, save for San Pedro. Jotham Bixby sold the 16,000-acre peninsula in 1913 for $150 million.
The pictorial covers the peninsula from its early days of whaling stations and sheep ranches to military installations and all the way up to its swanky status as containing some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America.
DOWN BY THE SEA SHORE: Being published appropriately concurrently with "Rancho Palos Verdes" is another Arcadia Images of America book, "Cabrillo Beach Coastal Park," detailing that stretch that hugs the Palos Verdes Peninsula's eastern coast and winds around into the wilder south side with its wondrous though now sadly over-harvested tide pools of Point Fermin.
The book shows the sort of savage pre-sustainable days of abalone hunting in the early 1900s, but it mostly celebrates the glories of the coast and its still-rich sea life, plus the early days of marine biology as well as fishing, recreation and a breakwater that actually enhances the area rather than rendering it a relatively lifeless pond. More space is given to sea creatures than human pioneers here, from the seals, sea lions, dolphin and whales that still frolic just yards off the coast, the intertidal sand dollars, sea urchins, nudibranchs and crabs. And, of course, Cabrillo Beach's famous grunion.
BACKGROUND: Both "Rancho Palos Verdes" and "Cabrillo Beach Coastal Park" make great use of historical photographs.
The Palos Verdes book was put together by Rancho Palos Verdes resident Ginger Garnett Clark, using photos from the Palos Verdes Library, the Point Vicente Interpretive Center and private collections of local residents.
The Cabrillo volume was compiled and written by Cabrillo Marine Aquarium director Mike Schaadt and the facility's exhibits director Ed Mastro, using the aquarium's archives and those of the San Pedro Historical Society, the Port of Los Angeles, the L.A. Maritime Museum and private collections.
The books retail for $21.99 each and are available at local sellers, online booksellers or through the publisher at www.arcadia
About the Author
Ginger Garnett Clark lives in Rancho Palos Verdes. Photographs in this book are from the Palos Verdes Library Local History Room, the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, and the private collections of the many generous people who live in Palos Verdes.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting History of an Interesting Place,
By
This review is from: Rancho Palos Verdes (Images of America) (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)) (Paperback)
The city of Rancho Palos Verdes was started in 1973, but Ginger Clark's book starts in the mid 1850's when the area was used for raising sheep. The altitude of the city goes from sea level to 1500 feet, and it has a long coastline. Just its topography alone makes it an interesting subject. The history of the land from the 19th century to the present is told with a series of pictures and explanatory captions. Clark has done a good job of researching the local repositories of photographs and picking the best ones. This book should be of interest to anyone who has ever lived in Palos Verdes or who is thinking of living there. She tells the bittersweet story of Marineland and does a good job of describing the landslide that destroyed many homes and still continues today. Notable people who contributed to the history of the area are shown doing the things that memorable people do. This is a valuable addition to the history of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
Look for Similar Items by Category
- Books > History > Americas > United States > State & Local
