Author Archives: Sam Gnerre

Hangar One, the first building erected at Mines Field, now Los Angeles International Airport, has managed to survive as the last remaining link to the airport’s earliest days during the golden age of aviation. Mines Field was named for real estate agent William Mines, who leased the former beanfield land to boosters of the airport.Continue reading “LAX’s Hangar One stand as the last link to the airport’s historic past”

Freeways figure so prominently in the everyday experience of most Southern Californians that it’s difficult to imagine the local landscape without them. The first Los Angeles freeway, the 110 in Pasadena, opened fully on New Year’s Eve, 1939. Los Angeles city and county officials and the Automobile Club of Southern California had all conducted studiesContinue reading “Piecing together the construction of the 405 Freeway through the South Bay”

For several decades, three of Japan’s largest automakers — Nissan, Toyota and Honda —  based their American operations from headquarters offices in the South Bay. I’ve written about Toyota, which moved its headquarters to 190th st. and Western Ave. in 1967, and Honda, which moved to Gardena in 1963 and to Torrance in 1984. ThatContinue reading “Nissan Motor Corp.’s American headquarters stayed in South Bay for nearly half a century”

The South Bay History blog is on vacation this week, Nov. 19, 2021, but will return with a new post next week (Nov. 26). Thanks for reading!  

William Kerckhoff lived for most of his life in the Adams district of Los Angeles, but the lumber and shipping operations he established in San Pedro during the 1880s became an important factor in the Harbor Area’s growth. Kerckhoff’s greatest fame, though, came from his later pioneering involvement in the electric and gas utilities industry.Continue reading “William Kerckhoff’s booming lumber business key to early development of San Pedro”

Up until about a hundred years ago, large bodies of standing water were the norm in low-lying parts of the South Bay and Harbor Area. Natural wetlands covered good-sized portions of the area. The native Tongva tribes who lived in the area before the arrival of European settlers navigated the shallow backwater lakes, known asContinue reading “The Dominguez Channel changed the face of a large swath of the South Bay/Harbor Area”

The Aluminum Corporation of America began as the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in 1888. Its founder, Charles Martin Hall, formed it after pioneering a new process of creating the then-rare metal, aluminum, from bauxite ore. 53 years later, the need for aluminum to build airplanes for America’s war effort brought the company, renamed the Aluminum CorporationContinue reading “Douglas Aircraft’s plant near Torrance began as an aluminum mill during World War II”

Consider this blog post part three of my history of the Hollywood Park site in Inglewood. Part 1 and Part 2 appeared in 2015, just after the main grandstand of the horse racing track Betfair Hollywood Park was brought down by implosion on May 31. Earlier that year, on Jan. 5, St. Louis Rams ownerContinue reading “Inglewood’s transformative Sofi Stadium is the most expensive ever built”

When I first began seeing references to the early 1900s tours operated by the Balloon Route Excursion Co., I assumed they were conducted using hot air balloons. I wondered how that possibly could have worked. A closer look revealed that the company’s tours got their name from the balloon-shaped trolley car route that they tookContinue reading “Balloon Route Excursion Co. trolley car tours included South Bay locations”

In 1966, The Links at Victoria Golf Course in Carson became the first golf course in the area to be built atop a former hazardous waste landfill. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors began accepting bids for the new regulation 18-hole course on 177 acres of land in October 1964, and it opened toContinue reading “Time is running out for The Links at Victoria Golf Course in Carson”