Author Archives: Sam Gnerre

Walter Storm, the owner of Western Brass Industries and several other firms in Harbor Gateway, had purchased 15 vacant acres adjacent to his businesses in the early 1960s with an eye toward eventually expanding his operations. Born in Texas, the industrious Storm had moved to California as a 20-year-old in 1924, where he proceeded toContinue reading “Georgia Claessens transformed neglected land into an affordable amusement park”

Every large seaport requires a customs house to oversee the flow of goods in and out of its jurisdiction. By the 1880s, the import/export trade at the harbor at Wilmington had grown significantly, thanks mainly to the development efforts of shipping magnate Phineas Banning. Banning built the first railroad connecting the port with the cityContinue reading “U.S. Customs House a fixture in the Harbor Area, until circumstances led to its departure”

Businesses and factories began moving to Torrance not long after its founding was announced publicly in 1912. With them came a rapid increase in population, as their employees began moving to the hospitable area to be close to work. By the time the city officially incorporated in 1921, its need for a large central publicContinue reading “Torrance Civic Auditorium filled an important need when it opened in 1936”

Born on Aug. 1, 1815, Richard Henry Dana Jr. grew up well-educated and privileged in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a well-known poet and author and founder of the North American Review, the first literary journal in the U.S. The young Dana entered Harvard in 1831, but his college days were interrupted during his juniorContinue reading “Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s saga ‘Two Years Before the Mast’ describes early San Pedro”

One of the greatest unsolved naval mysteries of the twentieth century involved the disappearance of the USS Cyclops in March 1918. On board were several Southern California seamen, including Harry M. Davis of Redondo Beach, who never were heard from again. Built in Philadelphia and commissioned in 1910, the Cyclops was a collier, a shipContinue reading “Redondo Beach man among those who disappeared aboard the USS Cyclops in 1918”

The headline writer for a 1923 story in the San Pedro News Pilot — “World’s Greatest Fossil Bed at Palos Verdes” — may have been guilty of hyperbole. But the Palos Verdes Peninsula certainly has yielded a rich store of paleontological data to scientists over the years. Prehistoric fossils, beginning with finds made nearly 100Continue reading “How whale fossils from the prehistoric Miocene era ended up atop The Hill”

In late 1958, Torrance officials received the news that Magnavox had purchased ten acres of land on Maricopa St. in the heart of the city with great enthusiasm. The Fort Wayne, Indiana-based electronics company, known to consumers for its radios, TVs and stereo equipment, planned to spend $1.5 million to build Magnavox Research Laboratories.  TheContinue reading “Torrance welcomed the arrival of Magnavox Research Laboratories with open arms”

It’s hard to imagine Redondo Beach as a sparsely populated area without any surrounding communities. But, until the late 1880s,  the resort town was considered an attractive but distant outpost. In 1889, a couple of former Oregon riverboat captains, J.C. Ainsworth and R.R. Thompson, formed the Redondo Railway Co., the Redondo Hotel Co. and theContinue reading “Railways and Red Cars boosted Redondo Beach development in its early years”

The governing board of Roosevelt Memorial Park cemetery and the RudolphWurlitzer Co. of North Tonawanda, New York, recached a business agreement in March 1924. The newspaper ad announcing the news proclaimed that, as a result, the cemetery would be receiving “the world’s mightiest pipe organ.” Indeed, the giant organ Wurlitzer would build would be toutedContinue reading “Roosevelt Memorial Park’s “mighty” pipe organ gradually grew quiet”

The stately San Pedro Hotel was built atop the 75-foot-high Nob Hill in San Pedro in the late 1880s, in the community’s early days. The first land deed for the Nob Hill area, located roughly between present-day First and Fourth streets near Harbor Blvd., was issued to shop owner John Malgren in 1882. Soon thereafter, manyContinue reading “The San Pedro Hotel moved from the top to the bottom of Nob Hill during its existence”