Author Archives: Sam Gnerre

Marineland’s growing appeal as a tourist attraction in the 1950s soon brought it attention from Hollywood. The picturesque location was a natural for location shooting, and its sea creatures of various types certainly were much easier to film there than in the wild. Underwater scenes for Roger Corman’s 1957 sci-fi quickie “Attack of the CrabContinue reading “Hollywood comes to Marineland of the Pacific”

Marineland of the Pacifc delighted millions during its 33-year run on the Rancho Palos Verdes coast. Its closure in 1987 by then-owners Harcourt Brace Jovanovich shocked and saddened its fans (and employees). So how did this institution on 65 acres of prime Long Point real estate come into being? Its genesis was in Florida, whereContinue reading “The origin and early days of Marineland of the Pacific”

When Raymond Arthur Vigneau’s estranged wife, Charlene, refused to run off with him on Saturday, Oct. 5, 1963, despite him telling her that he had “a suitcase full of money,” the largest bank robbery in South Bay history began to unravel. He hopped in her station wagon and took off from her Newbury Park home,Continue reading “1963 bank robbery near Torrance was an inside job”

A group of local businessmen formed the Inglewood Park Cemetery Association in 1905 in order to develop a  new burial ground on land at the northeast corner of Manchester Boulevard and Prairie Avenue. Though the Inglewood settlement had been in existence since the 1880s, Inglewood wasn’t incorporated officially until Feb. 8, 1908. That was twoContinue reading “The Inglewood Park Cemetery predates the city’s incorporation”

Before Unocal could sell 38 acres of its Torrance tank farm land at the corner of Crenshaw and Lomita boulevards to developers in 1989, it first had to do two things: clean up petroleum wastes, and capture the wild foxes that had been foraging in the grasslands that needed to be cleared. The parcel inContinue reading “Torrance Crossroads becomes a retail powerhouse”

The Rolling Hills General Store was known as the Rolling Hills Market when it opened in the distinctive building with the scrubbed white wooden exterior in 1938. That was before Rolling Hills Estates became an incorporated city (in 1957), so the paperwork for the enterprise were issued in Lomita in November 1938 to the PalosContinue reading “The Rolling Hills General Store”

George Wallace Post arrived in Torrance from York, Nebraska in 1913, one year after the new city was founded by Jared Sidney Torrance. Torrance had suggested to his old friend Post that he come out to California and help him with the establishment of a bank for the new city. Post was 65 when heContinue reading “George W. Post and the First National Bank of Torrance”

The five-bedroom house built at 100 The Strand in Hermosa Beach in 1928 had one design feature that made it stand out: a miniature lighthouse built on its southernmost corner that provided a spectacular ocean view. The unusual ornament was rumored to have been used as a real beacon during World War II, and theContinue reading “Hermosa Beach’s “lighthouse” at 100 The Strand”

Doughnut machine maker Russell C. Wendell really was thinking big when he decided to start his Big Donut chain of drive-in doughnut shops in 1950. He built his first Big Donut outlet that year at 10003 Normandie Avenue at Century Boulevard, in the Westmont area of South Los Angeles. Since programmatic architecture, in which theContinue reading “Iconic Randy’s Donuts began as part of the Big Donut chain”

The Sacramento, Redondo Beach’s onetime 300-foot-long fishing barge, began life in 1877 as The Newark, one of several ferries delivering passengers between San Francisco and Oakland. The Newark was a 268-foot-long side-wheel vessel operated by Southern Pacific, one of 43 in the Bay Area, until it was retired from service in 1921. After a completeContinue reading “Redondo Beach fishing barge the Sacramento goes to a watery grave”