Category Archives: Uncategorized

When Dana Andrews moved his family – wife Mary Todd Andrews and their three children, Katherine, Stephen and Susan, to the Palos Verdes Peninsula from Toluca Lake in October 1961, he was 52 years old and already had enjoyed a long, busy career as a film actor. Andrews was born Carver Dana Andrews on aContinue reading “Film star Dana Andrews finds a home in Rancho Palos Verdes”

The mosaic starts with vertical strips of tiny tiles in different shades of blue on the wall to your left as you enter the passageway from any of three terminals at Los Angeles International Airport that take you toward the baggage area, the street and the outside world. Gradually they shift to green, brown andContinue reading “Wall mosaics in LAX passageways lead travelers home”

The South Bay History blog is on vacation this week. It will return on December 2.

If you’re driving down Figueroa Street south through Wilmington along the edge of the 110 Freeway, you’ll find that it changes its name to John S. Gibson Boulevard after it passes Harry Bridges Boulevard near the Wilmington waterfront. The roadway isn’t the only San Pedro feature named after Gibson: the community’s iconic municipal building onContinue reading “Why John S. Gibson has those places named after him in San Pedro”

The man who brought the Red Onion restaurant chain to culinary prominence in Southern California, Robert “Bart” Earle, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, on Sept. 26, 1926. He came from a food-oriented background. His father, Enrique “Harry” Earle, had been born in Arizona to Guillermo Spiva and Catalina Castillo. Guillermo worked as a blacksmith inContinue reading “Peeling back the layers of the Red Onion’s history”

The idea to build Catalina Island’s “Airport in the Sky” first was floated on April 8, 1930. D.M. Renton, general manager of the Santa Catalina Island Company, announced plans to lop off the top of a 1,520-foot-high peak in the heart of the 21-mile-long island, ten miles northwest of Avalon. Phillip K. Wrigley, Renton’s bossContinue reading “Catalina Island builds an “Airport in the Sky””

Rosemary DeCamp first met John Ashton Shidler in 1928, while she was attending Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and he was an undergraduate at Stanford. “We called over to Stanford and asked them to send us five tall, dark and handsomes,” she recalled in a 1989 Daily Breeze article. Shidler was one of the five.Continue reading “John Shidler and Rosemary DeCamp become a Torrance power couple”

Developers A.D. Van Vranken and Thomas F. Hinds formed the Redondo Investment Co. in June 1947 for the purpose of building a modern shopping center on a triangular seven-and-a-half acre piece of land in Redondo Beach. The company was made up of the four land owners of the parcels that made up the triangle TheContinue reading “Triangle Shopping Center occupied its own corner of Redondo Beach history”

George Carson had led a full life well worth chronicling even before he met and married Maria Victoria Dominguez and became the patriarch of one of the most important families in South Bay history. Carson was born in Jordan, New York, in 1832. Many sources list his birth date as March 23, 1829, but thisContinue reading “George Carson: Soldier, merchant, rancher and South Bay patriarch”

Motor sports of all kinds owe a great debt to Ascot Park, where all manner of engines roared for 33 years. The half-mile dirt track on 37 acres of land at Vermont Avenue and 182nd Street actually was located in Harbor Gateway on City of Los Angeles land just east of Gardena. But the track,Continue reading “Small track at Ascot Park played a big role in auto racing history”