Author Archives: Sam Gnerre

Historians have pored over the details of the October 1846 encounter known as “The Battle of Dominguez Rancho” at great length. The story has been retold and even re-enacted many times, though the “battle” really was little more than a skirmish. It occurred on Dominguez Hill near the house that Rancho San Pedro land grantContinue reading “The Battle of Dominguez Rancho and “The Old Woman’s Gun””

The Redondo Beach Pavilion building truly served as a multipurpose entertainment center for the more than half a century that it stood at 123 El Paseo at the foot of Emerald Ave., near the city’s Municipal and Monstad piers. Built in 1907, it housed the second-floor Mandarin Ballroom (later the Redondo Barn) for dance concerts,Continue reading ““Specs” Saunders and his Skateland roller rink enlivened Redondo Beach during the 1950s”

Fort MacArthur in San Pedro got its name not from Gen. Douglas MacArthur, but from his father, Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur. Career soldier Arthur MacArthur earned the Medal of Honor in 1890 for his valor in battle as a 19-year-old soldier during the Civil War. He and Douglas later became the first father and sonContinue reading “Fort MacArthur played a key role in Southern California’s coastal defense system for decades (Part 2)”

Fort MacArthur once served as the only coastal military base defending the Southern California coast, with the exception of the naval bases in San Diego. But its genesis and contentious history began well before any physical military presence became ensconced there. The Mexican government first designated the area overlooking San Pedro Bay as a strategicContinue reading “Fort MacArthur’s back story includes a bare-knuckles legal brawl over its land (Part 1)”

I want to explore in greater detail what I mentioned in a post awhile back regarding the government’s use of Torrance Municipal Airport, then known as the Lomita Flight Strip, to house Japanese-Americans returning from internment camps following World War II. During the war, the government owned the Lomita Flight Strip, and had been usingContinue reading “Lomita Flight Strip in Torrance housed relocated Japanese-Americans after World War II”

The continuing industrialization at the newly minted Port of Los Angeles had made at least one critical infrastructure need a necessity little more than a decade after the Port was formed in 1909: the Harbor Area needed its own power plant. Welders at the giant shipbuilding plants such as Los Angeles Shipbuilding, founded in 1917, Continue reading “Wilmington’s Harbor Generating Station power plant took some time to come online”

Everything changed for the troubled Ocean Trails Golf Course when real estate mogul Donald Trump announced he was buying the 261-acre property on Aug. 19, 2002. The course had yet to be restored to its full 18 holes after the June 1999 landslide that caved in the 18th fairway shortly before its planned grand opening.Continue reading “Donald Trump transforms Ocean Trails into Trump National Golf Club”

The Rancho Palos Verdes site on which the Trump National Golf Club of Los Angeles now operates once was part of the Rancho de los Palos Verdes land grant. After an 1882 legal settlement, ownership passed to the Bixby family. In the early 20th century, the Ishibashi family became the first of many Japanese farmersContinue reading “Ocean Trails Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes takes shape on former coastal farmland”

11-year-old Karen Lynn Tompkins disappeared after she began walking home from an arts and crafts summer class at Halldale Elementary School in Harbor Gateway on Aug. 18, 1961, carrying two covered wagon models she’d made there. Nearly a year later, a skin diver found the unclothed body of Dorothy Gale Brown in the ocean  offContinue reading “Closure yet to come for South Bay families devastated by loss of their daughters in early 1960s”

After founding New London Junior College in Connecticut in 1939, Dr. and Mrs. Richard P. Saunders became enamored of the idea of establishing a similar small community college in California. The couple had moved to the Los Angeles area after World War II from San Francisco, where Dr. Saunders had been stationed. They explored theContinue reading “Palos Verdes College: Noble 8-year experiment may have been ahead of its time”