South Bay History

“To have it so visible and to have it be that hideous color…It’s at the entrance to the community and it just looks terrible.” 

That’s how Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores described the nudie bar Shipwreck Joey’s to the Los Angeles Times in 1988.

The nightclub’s “Topless” sign stood out, a garish beacon at Figueroa and B streets in Wilmington. Easily visible from the 110 Freeway, especially at night, Shipwreck Joey’s  once-stylish building was fully covered by painted “Topless” signs by the late 1980s.

It wasn’t always that way. In 1941, John Frankovich, owner of the Waldorf Inn on Sixth St. in San Pedro decided that the site at 1331 W. B St. would make a great location for a 24-hour drive-in cafe, catering to truck drivers and other workers at the Port of Los Angeles just to the south of it.

On Jan. 10, 1942, the Bay View Drive-In opened, staffed by three chefs and 20 carhops and other wait staff members. The new restaurant offered both car and sit-down table service. It prospered during World War II, serving the large numbers of industrial workers at the port supporting the war effort.

As early as 1942, the Bay View had introduced live entertainment and floor shows to its menu, billing itself in some San Pedro News Pilot advertisements as the “Bay View Drive-In Nite Club.” Another ad from December 1946 announcing a change in ownership may have signaled a drop-off in its business following the end of the war.

The Bay View’s history during the 1950s is less documented, making the precise determination of its transformation into Shipwreck Joey’s hard to pinpoint. The name change  probably happened during the early 1960s.

By the latter half of the 1960s, Shipwreck Joey’s had become a full-on nightclub, though its offerings during this era – live country and western performers – were much more respectable than the entertainment offered in its later incarnation.

Local country performers became a staple at the club, including Johnny & Jonie Mosby in 1968. The duo had several country music hits during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bakersfield standout Wynn Stewart’s appearance at the came in the late 1970s, shortly before the club became a topless establishment.

Not surprisingly, it was Shipwreck Joey’s transformation into a topless cabaret that led to controversy, bringing new meaning to its ad slogan, “Where Figueroa ends and fun begins.” As we noted above, the club was hard to miss for those passing by. Its high visibility brought in customers, but also heightened its notoriety.

Complaints about the club increased during the 1980s, with many locals joining with Supervisor Flores in calling for its closure.

Residents and civic officials may have disliked Shipwreck Joey’s, but it became popular with Hollywood locations scouts during this period.

The club was repainted with pink lettering for the 1985 William Friedkin drama “To Live and Die in L.A.,” and both its exterior and interior were used in the production. Its name was retained. Episodes of the 1987-88 CBS television series “Houston Knights” also were filmed there.

The beginning of the end came in September 1988, when the owners of the property, brothers Maurice and William Rosenfeld and their sister, Sally Harris, of Beverly Hills, put the parcel on the market, asking $1.5 million. The Port of Los Angeles expressed interest in the land, which it wanted as part of its planned buffer zone between the Port and Wilmington residents, but balked at the price tag, offering just $975,000.

The club soldiered on for the next few months as the land’s owners sought a buyer who would do something more constructive with the land. It finally closed for good in July 1990, when the owners approved plans by Rocco Grieco of San Pedro to build a truck stop there.

Grieco, who purchased the land for $1.2 million, built the Harbor Truck Stop using the Shipwreck Joey’s building (with all signage removed). It included a weigh scale, bays for washing trucks and a small cafe and market. It opened in 1990 and operated at the location on B St., which was renamed Harry Bridges Blvd. in 1994, for several years.

In 1998, the Port purchased the land from Grieco, who then moved his Harbor Truck Stop operation to a larger location at 2130 W. Pacific Coast Hwy. on the eastern edge of Long Beach.

A year later, the empty building was used in another well-known film, becoming “Lou’s Tavern” for “Fight Club” in 1999, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. The building finally was razed in 2000.

The empty land became part of the Port’s buffer zone plan to shield Wilmington residents from noise and encroaching development. 

A 20-foot-high wall originally was part of the plan, but residents protested, opting for the building of Wilmington Waterfront Park instead. The old Shipwreck Joey’s lot directly south of the park remains undeveloped, save for an exit ramp from the northbound 110 Freeway that leads onto Harry Bridges Blvd.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Harbor Truck Stop website.

Los Angeles Times archives.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

“To Live and Die in L.A.,” Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on location) website.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.

“Watt’s picture of the week – Friday, February 6, 2015,” by Mike Watt, The Los Angeles Beat blog, Feb. 6, 2015..

“Wilmington: Missions Down ‘B’ Street,” by Doña Junta, Swapmeet Chronicles blog, Nov. 2, 2010.

Evelyn Dawn Thomas was born the youngest of seven children in Long Beach on July 8, 1907.

The Thomas family moved to Glendale, and Evelyn graduated from Glendale High before attending USC. Her specialty was dance, and by the 1930s she had become a dance instructor. (She also had dropped her last name, becoming just “Evelyn Dawn.”)

By 1946, Dawn had become affiliated with Chadwick School on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and had begun offering children’s dance instruction in Rolling Hills.

Unsing the name “Miss Dawn,” she moved fully into childhood education when she started up a preschool in Manhattan Beach in 1951. She would be known as Miss Dawn for the rest of her life, even after marrying and having two children.

Miss Dawn’s School proved popular with both its 60 students and their parents, and a second location opened at 215 Avenue I in Redondo Beach in 1953. The addition of a pool a couple of years later allowed the school to also offer swimming lessons during the summer. Its enrollment eventually reached 135 students.

Miss Dawn had a broader view of early education’s purpose than merely focusing on the rote learning of facts. The Palos Verdes Peninsula News quoted a speech of hers in 1956: 

“Our part should not be limited to baby sitting, nor should it represent a pre-mature forcing of formal education from tests. It should be the introduction of the child to one of the most important things he will ever learn . . . how to get along with other people.”

The popular school would expand again, this time to a 300-student capacity, when it moved to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1961.

In March of that year, the Rolling Hills United Methodist Church asked the city of Rolling Hills Estates for a zoning change that would allow it to build its new church on a six-acre site it had purchased on the northeast corner of Crenshaw Blvd. and Palos Verdes Drive North.

Half of the parcel would be used for the church, with the other half dedicated to the construction of a new school which would include preschool and elementary grades.

At first, the Peninsula News gave its name as Miss Dawn’s Country Day School, but the name became Rolling Hills Country Day School before it was completed.

The plan for the $300,000 private school was approved and Pasadena architect Lee Kline was hired to design it. In the meantime, Miss Dawn moved her school from Redondo Beach to four classrooms at the closed Rolling Hills School, sharing the space with the Rolling Hills Estates city offices, in time for summer school classes in 1961.

The new school would contain 14,000 square feet of floor space. One building would house the cafeteria, kindergarten and pre-school areas. It was designed with movable walls for indoor and outdoor activities, as well as the capacity to transform into an auditorium seating 300. Elementary classrooms for grades 1-6, the library and administrative offices would occupy a second building.

Ground was officially broken for the new school on April 2, 1963. As in Miss Dawn’s previous school incarnations, Its curriculum would stress the basic communication skills for reading, writing and speaking English but also includes Spanish for all classes, French, beginning typing and laboratory science for fifth and sixth graders. 

Rolling Hills Country Day School officially opened on Sept. 23, 1963, and a dedication ceremony and open house followed a month later.

Three years later, the school began planning a major expansion. Two more acres of land were purchased for the addition of a recreational building and a swimming pool, with Lee Kline again hired as architect. Also, the school announced the addition of seventh and eighth grade classes aimed at preparing its students for high school.

In 1981, Eveyln Dawn founded a secondary school, Rolling Hills Prep, that originally shared quarters with Rolling Hills Country Day School. (More on Rolling Hills Prep in a future post.) She also had helped found Canyon Verde Schools in Torrance in 1977, a program that assists children and adults who have learning disabilities or emotional problems.

Dawn also actively supported the Peninsula-based nonprofit Help the Homeless Help Themselves through school fundraisers and other activities.

She died in her sleep at her Redondo Beach home on July 16, 2000, eight days after her 93rd birthday. Her educational philosophies have lived on, however.

In 1975, she told the Daily Breeze, “We’re not preparing them (students) for high school, rather we’re preparing them (for) forever.” The philosophy continues to serve its nearly 400-student population to this day.

Sources:

“About Us,” Rolling Hills Country Day School website.

“The Best Potato Crusted Salmon,” by Lori Lynn, Taste With the Eyes blog, July 10, 2010.

Daily Breeze archives.

“I Am One of Miss Dawn’s Little Sponges,” by Steven B. Rogers, Looking Toward Portugal blog, Oct. 22, 2014.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Palos Verdes Peninsula News archives.

The small community of Lomita traces its origins back to 1907, when the W.I. Hollingsworth Co. purchased its land for development.

By 1909, the first churches, banks and stores had been built in the sleepy enclave. Farmers raised a variety of crops in the area, which once boastfully called itself “the celery capital of the world.”

The 1920s oil boom brought more people to the area, though farming remained its main business. A move toward incorporation came in 1929, when surrounding cities, mostly Torrance, began making noises about annexing the settlement. It failed, however.

The area would remain part of Los Angeles County for many more years, and it was the County government that Lomita residents began to petition for a public park to be built during the 1930s.

In January 1937, local realtor John Welte took the park idea to County Supervisor Leland Ford. He suggested the six-plus acre former Edwards estate as the park’s site, offering to sell it to the county for $7500. The rectangular plot, empty except for a five-room house and some outbuildings, lie between Eshelman Ave. and Artisano St. (later renamed Walnut).

Ford turned him down flat at first, but later changed his mind. In July 1937, the Board of Supervisors allocated $8000 in its budget for 1937-38 for the purchase of land for the new park. A local citizen’s group unanimously endorsed the idea.

In December, the board approved the purchase, agreeing to pay Welte’s asking price after determining it to be fair. The sale became official in March 1938, and work was slated to begin on transforming the land into a park. The five-room house would be kept and converted into a community center.

But money was hard to come by in a country still suffering from the Depression. Also complicating matters, development was halted when the possibility of turning the land into an  active oil field was broached that August. Fortunately, that plan eventually was dropped, but not before delaying the start of work on the park.

The county stepped up with an initial $3500 with which to start construction. Its engineers proposed a couple of plans, one of which included a baseball diamond. The local chamber of commerce preferred a plan calling for a smaller softball diamond, tennis courts, playground equipment and bleachers. 

The county agreed to pay for initial landscaping, but not ongoing maintenance. In May 1940, Narbonne High gardening students were recruited to do the actual planting, under supervision from a county agronomist. They planted more than 800 shrubs over the ensuing months.

As work continued on the playground and other facilities, local groups began pressuring the county to build a new recreation center building at the park at a cost of $20,000, but the county demurred.

Still, excitement for the new Lomita Park grew. It reached a peak on Sept. 20, 1941, when the Town Hall Parade through the city wended its way to the park, then still very much still under construction. The Torrance Herald estimated that 2,000 people flowed into the park following the parade.

Two months later, all progress on the partially completed park stopped with the U.S. entry into World War II following Pearl Harbor. 

Funds were allocated to continue working on Lomita Park again in 1945, and Los Angeles contractor H.J. Farrington was hired for the job. His progress was slowed by a new problem: acquiring sufficient building materials during the postwar housing boom.

The park remained closed to the public for the next couple of years while Farrington scrambled to finish the project in 1948. That September, the new park hosted the “Gaucho Days” community celebration. A couple of years later, the park got its long-requested community center, which opened in 1950.

When the city of Torrance once again began making annexation noises during the mid-1950s, Lomita’s residents began another incorporation movement. In June 1964, its residents voted in favor of becoming a city, 2,078 to 1,742. Incorporation became official on June 30, 1964, and, that December, ownership of Lomita Park was transferred from Los Angeles County to the new city.

Since then, Lomita Park has become the city’s recreational mecca. It currently has the softball field, two tennis courts, a basketball court, a soccer pitch, expanded picknicking and playground areas and an indoor gymnasium.

The city operates dozens of recreational programs and sports leagues there. One of its longest running offerings is a dog obedience class run by the Lomita Obedience Training Club since 1954.

Lomita Park also hosts the city’s annual Founders Day celebration every June, a community fiesta on the last Saturday of the month which includes rides, games, food and the city’s annual fireworks show. This year marks the return of the festival following its cancellation due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021.

Sources:

City of Lomita website.

Daily Breeze archives.

Lomita … A Century Remembered: From Barley to Barnyards to Boulevards, by Jim Cole, Advanced Printing/Graphics, Wilmington, Calif., 2007.

Lomita Obedience Training Club website.

Peninsula Press archives.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

Torrance Press Herald archives.

During her lifetime, Romana Acosta Bañuelos rose higher in the federal government than any Latinx person before her. Considering that she had been deported as a child, her achievements become even more remarkable.

She was born in Miami, Arizona on March 20, 1925. Her father, Juan Francisco Acosta, worked for the local Miami Copper Company until the Depression hit in 1929 and subsequent falling copper prices led the firm to stop production.

Like many other families, the Acostas became destitute when the operation shut down. In 1933, Gila County welfare officials and mining company executives enforced a repatriation program begun by President Herbert Hoover to send struggling immigrant workers back to Mexico. Romana’s parents had little choice; they agreed to return to live with relatives in Sonora when she was seven years old.

While in Sonora, she worked on the small ranch owned by her relatives, and learned to cook, including making tortillas, from her mother. She married at age 15 and had two children before divorcing her husband.

At 18, she returned to the U.S. with her sons, Carlos and Martin, and began working at a series of menial jobs during the early 1940s. Her goal always was to save enough money to start a business of her own. She worked in a laundromat, washed dishes, waitressed and worked many late nights making tortillas.

She eventually found work in a Southern California defense plant, and by the time she was 21, she had saved about $500. She met and married Alejandro Bañuelos and they lived in Los Angeles, where she used the money to buy equipment to open her own tortilla shop with her Aunt Helen.

The new business, Casablanca #2 near Temple and Bixel streets in the Echo Park area,  made $36 on its first day of business in 1947, and Romana never looked back. She and Alejandro moved to a new location at 13363 S. Western Ave. in Gardena in 1954, calling it at first “Ramona’s Tortilla & Tamale Factory.”

There’s some speculation over the spelling change from “Romana” to “Ramona.” It’s likely that Ramona was felt to be easier to remember than the more unusual Romana. Others theorize that the name honored the early California heroine Ramona of “Ramona Pageant” fame, while some say it was just a mistake made by the sign painters at the new location.

In any case, the family quickly set about manufacturing their own tortillas to sell in their new Ramona’s restaurant, which became very successful. Romana introduced many of the dishes she had learned in Sonora, which were not as commonplace a part of the local cuisine 70 years ago  as they have become since.

The popularity of their dishes led to more restaurant locations, and, crucially, a move into the prepackaged food market. Soon, the Ramona’s brand of burritos and other items began appearing in supermarkets, and the formerly small operation became Ramona’s Mexican Food Products Inc.

The success of the family business didn’t escape the attention of area Latino businessmen, who approached her husband about the possibility of forming a bank to help fellow business owners thrive. 

Alejandro suggested they talk to Romana instead, and, with her help, the Pan American Business Bank was created, opening its office in East Los Angeles in 1964. Romana became very involved with its operation, becoming chairperson of its board of directors in 1969, the same year she received the Outstanding Business Woman of the Year award from the City of Los Angeles.

When his staff told President Richard Nixon of her story, he sensed an opportunity to curry favor with Latinx voters, who hadn’t supported him as much as he would have liked in the 1968 election.

When the Nixon administration asked Romana if she would consider accepting the post of U.S. Treasurer in 1970, she hesitated. Her husband encouraged her to accept the honor, with neither of them thinking she would actually win the nomination.

The U.S. Treasurer serves under the Secretary of the Treasury to implement many of the practical procedures and operations of the agency. To Romana and Alejandro’s surprise, Nixon picked her as his nominee in 1971.

After a contentious confirmation hearing during which her business was raided for illegal aliens in an attempt to spoil her chances, she was confirmed as U.S. Treasurer on Dec. 17, 1971. Her signature began appearing on U.S. paper currency as she assumed the duties of her new job.

She served as U.S. Treasurer until February 1974, six months before Nixon left office following the Watergate scandal and hearings. She then returned to her food business and banking activities in Southern California.

By 1979, Ramona’s was manufacturing and distributing 22 different food products, employed more than 400, and had annual sales of $12 million. 

Over the years, Romana gradually turned the operation over to her children and grandchildren, who continue to run the company now known as Ramonas Food Group. She remained active in the Pan American National Bank for many years, serving as its chairman for a total of three separate terms.

She died at a Redondo Beach nursing home at 92 on Jan. 15, 2018.

Sources:

“Celebrating Romana Acosta Bañuelos, Founder of Ramona’s Mexican Food Products,” by S. Francona, L.A. Taco website, April 29 2015.

Daily Breeze archives.

“Emulating Mrs. B,” by Becky May, Hispanic Executive website, March 1, 2018.

Los Angeles Times archives.

New York Times archives.

Ramonas Food Group Facebook page.

“Romana Acosta Bañuelos,” by Christina Marin, Arizona Memory Project website, 2009.

Wikipedia.

The first meeting of the Manhattan Beach Badminton Club took place at the home of Doug Todd on Sept. 2, 1936.

By then, the assembled group already had begun its search for a place to play their game. They settled on the second floor of the Marine Avenue Pavilion, a wood-frame bathhouse on the beach that had opened in 1922.

Once a social gathering place in the town, the two-story structure had become somewhat dilapidated by this time. The avid players forged an agreement to use the top floor of the bathhouse, which had been used as a dancehall, for badminton matches.

One problem: its 15-foot ceiling wasn’t nearly high enough to accommodate the game. Rules had to be adopted to account for shuttlecocks hitting the ceiling during play, which happened frequently.

The new club’s members met regularly, and eventually decided to raise money to build their own badminton facility. While casting about for ways to do that, they came up with an idea, possibly from watching the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musicals of the day: let’s put on a show!

They staged a musical comedy, “April Follies,” at the Pier Avenue School in Hermosa Beach for several weekends. Club members handled all the production’s details, from costumes to advertising and ticket sales.

Enough money was raised from it – about $2,000 – to buy seven connected parcels of land in the then-desolate inland area of Manhattan Beach then known as “the back country.” The lots were selling for $200 each at the time. (Lots on the strand cost $1200.)

By 1940, construction had begun on the new clubhouse on 18th St. near Ardmore Ave., and its courts opened for play in 1941. (Coincidentally, the Marine Avenue bathhouse burned down that year and had to be demolished.)

In addition to building the club, the members also paid for the construction of part of 18th St., from Ardmore up to the club. The roadway didn’t exist before the club was built.

This surge in interest in badminton wasn’t just a local phenomenon. The sport’s first club had formed in New York City in 1878. The sport initially became popular among British officers who had served in India during the 19th century. Its name comes from a British estate, the Duke of Beaufort’s Badminton House in Gloucestershire.

Badminton became popular among the Hollywood elite during the 1930s, numbering such luminaries as James Cagney, Bette Davis, Boris Karloff, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks among its players.

After the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, the U.S. Army took over the club. It was used as officer’s quarters and an entertainment center for the troops stationed nearby at Live Oak Park and at the artillery battery installed on 19th St. to protect the coastline from invaders. When the threat of invasion lessened, the Army returned it to club members in November 1943.

Though it’s often fallaciously regarded as being as lightweight as its rackets and birdies by those who’ve only dabbled in the game in their backyards, competitive badminton takes both remarkable hand-to-eye coordination and top physical conditiing.

The sport enjoys tremendous popularity in Asia and Europe, and it officially became part of the Summer Olympics at the 1992 Games in Barcelona. To date, no American has medaled in badminton in the Olympics.

But its American devotees remain hooked on the game. As players grew in strength and skill, the once-ample 30-foot ceilings at the Manhattan Beach Badminton Club have been judged by some to be too low for the venue to host top-flight international competitions.

That didn’t keep the club from hosting the final Olympic Badminton qualifying tournament in the U.S. before the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics in 2016, with the world’s top 65 players from 21 countries competing to become eligible.

The building has been modernized and remodeled over the years. In 1951, its popular swimming pool was added. During the 1960s, a lounge and outdoor kitchen were built, and special wooden flooring that was easier on players’ legs was installed. Its exterior has been updated and accessibility ramps put in place.

In 1974, the club asked the Manhattan Beach City Council for a permit to expand its facilities. Neighbors raised objections, citing potential noise and traffic problems if the court were allowed to add two more courts, and the permit was denied.

The club eventually added the courts; it now has five. But a restriction added later by the council limits the club to 250 members, resulting in potential new members being put on a sometimes-long waiting list.

Despite its status as one of only a handful of venues in Southern California completely dedicated to badminton play, the generic-looking Manhattan Beach Badminton Club building isn’t widely known; it often gets mistaken for the phone company or an Edison substation. But, to its members, it’s home to a game they love.

Sources:

Beach Reporter archives.

Daily Breeze archives.

Easy Reader archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Manhattan Beach Badminton Club website.

“Manhattan Beach Badminton Club & The Road to Rio,” The South Bay Show podcast, Jan. 28, 2016.

“United States Badminton History,” by the United States Badminton Association, Washington Post website.

A Walk Beside the Sea: A History of Manhattan Beach, by Jan Dennis, Janstan Studio, 1987.

Video:

A spirited rally during the 2015 match between top-seeded Nicholas Waller and local product Shawn Whong at the Adult Nationals at the Manhattan Beach Badminton Club.

Automotive innovator Carroll Shelby’s career – race car driver, inventor, car manufacturer, chili salesman, chicken farmer – sounds like the life’s work of half a dozen men instead of just one.

The man celebrated in the 2019 Oscar-winning film, “Ford v Ferrari,” came from humble beginnings. Shelby was born Carroll Hall Shelby on Jan. 11, 1923, in the small east Texas town of Leesburg. 

The family moved to Dallas, a bit over 100 miles west of Leesburg, when Shelby was 7. By then, he already knew he’d been born with a heart valve defect; it would trouble him for much of his life.

Shelby served as a flight instructor in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After the war, he worked in the Texas oil fields before becaming a chicken farmer. He caught the auto racing bug after an Army buddy visited him and took him for a ride in an MG sports car in 1952.

That year, he entered his first race, a local drag race. He continued racing successfully while still tending to his farm, and became famous in his early years for wearing a farmer’s striped bib overalls while competing.

Eventually, he turned to racing full time, with increasing success in the 1950s, especially after joining the Aston Martin team in 1954. By 1957, he had become one of America’s top sports car drivers. In 1959, he became only the second American-born driver to win the 24-hour race at Le Mans, France. (Phil Hill was the first, winning in 1958.)

Shelby’s racing career ended in 1960. In February, his chest pains were diagnosed as angina, and doctors told him he would have to quit racing. He left his wife and three children in Texas – he would marry seven times during his lifetime – and moved to California, where he began operating a Goodyear Racing Tire franchise in La Mirada. The Los Angeles Times-Mirror Grand Prix that December was his final race as a driver.

Faced with the end of racing, Shelby turned his attention to another one of his ambitions: creating high-performance autos that could rival those produced by Italian carmaker Enzo Ferrari. This new endeavor forms the basis of the “Ford v Ferrari” film, with Matt Damon portraying Shelby.

Shelby threw all his energies into the quest, forming the firm Shelby American in 1962. Shelby American completed its first car, the 260 Roadster, in February, and the firm’s owner renamed it the Cobra. In March, Shelby opened a garage and manufacturing shop in Venice at 1042 Princeton Dr. in March. (The area is now part of Marina del Rey.) 

By June 1963, the first 125 Cobras had been built, and Shelby had begun to fashion a relationship with the Ford Motor Co. in order to begin the challenge to Ferrari’s supremacy. In 1964, a Shelby Daytona Coupe won the GT class at Le Mans, defeating Ferrari.

Shelby’s operations eventually outgrew the Venice location, and he moved Shelby American to a hangar on the south end of Los Angeles International Airport in 1965. The building at 6501 W. Imperial Hwy. still stands, and now houses the Japanese aviation firm Nippon Cargo Airlines.

It would serve as the headquarters for the building of the Shelby Mustang GT350 in conjunction with Ford, which had introduced the commercial version of the Mustang in 1964. Despite occasional clashes with Ford’s corporate hierarchy, the partnership succeeded winning Le Mans four straight years with their cars from 1966-69.

Shelby moved his operations again to Torrance in 1967, using a building near the Torrance Municipal Airport after losing his LAX lease. He “retired” from the racing world in 1970, and devoted his attention to traveling the world, including living for a time in South Africa, and promoting his chili brand via chili cookoffs. (He sold his food company to Kraft Foods in 1986.)

He’d held onto his Goodyear tire shop, and formed an auto parts division headquartered at 19021 S. Figueroa St. in Carson in 1971 that specialized in wheel rims. It remains Shelby American’s main presence in the South Bay, though the firm is now headquartered in Las Vegas.

He would, of course, return to the world of his first love, high-performance autos, several more times. In the 1980s, he collaborated with his old Ford contact Lee Iacocca, who had become the head of Chrysler Corp., on a series of Dodge autos, including serving as a consultant on the Dodge Viper sports car.

In June 1990, Shelby underwent a heart transplant operation. A year later, he formed the Shelby Heart Fund charity, later renamed the Carroll Shelby Foundation. Shelby also received a kidney transplant in 1996. The Carson-based Foundation continues to pursue its goal of providing assistance for acute coronary and kidney care for young people.

In 2003, he partnered again with Ford for the reintroduction of the Ford Shelby Mustang GT-500 model, which appeared in 2005 for the first time in 35 years.

Shelby remained active throughout the 2000s, right up until his death on May 10, 2012, in Dallas, Texas, after being hospitalized with pneumonia. He was 89.

Shelby was named to the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1992, and received dozens of other honors for his creations, which revolutionized the automobile industry more than once during his long career.

The firm he began, Shelby American, moved its headquarters to Las Vegas in 2013, where it still operates and offers tours of its Shelby Heritage Center. In addition, a group of enthusiasts worked with Shelby to create the Shelby Museum in Boulder, Colorado, which also contains dozens of examples of his vehicles.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Daily News archives.

“From L.A. to Vegas, tracing the legacy of Carroll Shelby: Fifty years of Shelby, American,” by Sam Smith, Road & Track website, April 17, 2014.

“History: Carroll Hall Shelby, 1923-2012,” Shelby American Inc. website.

Los Angeles Times archives.

New York Times archives.

“Timeline: Carroll Shelby’s Life, 1923-2012,” by Christian Seabaugh, Motor Trend website, May 11, 2012.

Further reading:

Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, by A.J. Baime, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 

The Los Angeles Galaxy Major League Soccer team has signed a deal ensuring that the soccer fields just north of the courthouse in Torrance will stay open at least until 2028. The news has cheered fans and players in the town where the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) was born.

But how did the prime 6.2-acre site at 555 Maple Ave. in the heart of the city become available in the first place?

The land sat unused until 1958, when the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Co., founded in 1888,  opened the first of two plants there to produce paper bags in large quantities for the suburban market. Despite its name, the company had maintained a West Coast presence since 1925.

The firm opened a much larger adjacent plant on the site on Jan. 1, 1960. Part of the company’s Hinde & Dauch division, it covered 110,000 square feet and cost $500,000 to build and equip. Its main product: corrugated, moisture-resistant cardboard boxes suitable for use by fruit and vegetable growers for shipping.

West Virginia Pulp’s tenure at the Maple Ave. plant ended just a few years later. By 1965, a new paper-products tenant had occupied the building. Boise Cascade had formed in a 1957 merger of a pair of Idaho and Washington lumber companies.

Its business took off almost immediately, and its growth in the lumber, building and paper products industry eventually would transform it into a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. In addition to its Maple Ave. plant, the company also operated a facility nearby at 540 Hawaii Ave.

Boise Cascade maintained that presence in Torrance until 1990, when it closed down the Maple Ave. plant. Epson America had bought the land from Boise in 1986, thinking that it might need it to expand its then-new plant nearby on Madrona Ave.

That never happened, and a new neighboring entity began talking about acquiring the parcel in 1991. The courthouse housing the Los Angeles Superior Court had been built just south of it in 1968 at 825 Maple Ave. It had quickly grown overcrowded when the decision was made to headquarter area municipal courts there also.

News of Boise Cascade’s abandonment of the large property just north of the courthouse sounded like it might be the perfect solution. After negotiations concluded, the county Board of Supervisors agreed to buy the 6.2 acres for $8.6 million from Epson, who had levelled the former Boise Cascade building in preparation for the sale.

It was a forward-thinking move. The county knew it might not have the funds to build the proposed $47.9 million additional courthouse for possibly another ten years or so. But, this way, it would have a place to put it once funding could be secured.

The court’s administrators had been trying to figure out a way to shoehorn a new building and giant parking garage onto the parking lot of its existing site, without success.

But the ten years became closer to twenty, and still the lot remained empty, full of weeds and dumped trash. California Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, D-El Segundo, came up with a plan to construct soccer fields on the vacant land for community use while everyone waited for the courthouse building plan to become reality.

Torrance city officials agreed to the plan in July 2011, stipulating that it would operate on a low-cost, month-by-month lease basis. A ten-year lease with the Judicial Council of California, the land’s official owner, was arranged for a fee of $1 per year, with Torrance committing to fund the building of the fields. 

Construction on the $3.2 million facility began in 2013. In March 2014, Toyota secured naming rights to the project with a $500,000 donation to the city. The Toyota Sports Complex opened with much fanfare on March 26, 2014. It hosted its first major event that July when it hosted the AYSO’s National Games, which drew more than 500 teams from across the country.

The heavily used facility quickly grew into a vital part of the Torrance youth sports community.

Hence, the alarm raised by the October 2021 news that the Judicial Council of California planned to raise its rent under terms of its new lease agreement from $1 per year to $33,000 per month.

The city couldn’t afford it, and closure seemed a very real possibility. Community response against the closure was strong, with a petition to save it garnering more than 4,300 signatures. 

Fortunately, the Los Angeles Galaxy franchise stepped up in December and made a deal to pay $20,000 per month to use the facility for training. The team already operates the Kinecta Soccer Center building across the street.

Under the terms of the deal, the Galaxy will use the the fields Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Tuesday and Thursday nights, with youth soccer groups having access the rest of the time.

Galaxy and city officials officially opened the refurbished and renamed L.A. Galaxy Sports Complex on April 16, 2022, putting an end to community fears that the complex would be closed for at least another six years.

A new courthouse may yet appear on the site after 2028, but for now, soccer reigns supreme on Maple.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.

2014 City of Torrance video:

Ozzie Nelson was casting about for a way to make a living in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash when he turned to music.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1906, Nelson went to Rutgers, where he earned both his bachelor’s degree and, in 1930, his law degree. He earned money by playing the saxophone in bands on the side during college.

When job prospects grew dim following his graduation during the Depression, he decided to return to music. He formed a big band, the Ozzie Nelson Band, playing gigs mostly in and around New York City.

Nelson’s easygoing singing style and sense of humor helped make the group popular, and Brunswick Records quickly signed them to a contract. In 1932, aspiring actress Harriet Hilliard became the group’s lead singer.

The pair’s relationship eventually blossomed into romance, and Ozzie and Harriet married in 1935. She continued to perform with the band, which had a Number One hit that year, “And Then Some.”

Hilliard acted in several movies, including “Follow the Fleet” alongside Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Ozzie’s show business sense led him into movie appearances and a series of humorous musical short subjects featuring him leading his band.

All roads seemed to lead to California, and the couple moved there in 1941 in order to appear as guests on Red Skelton’s new radio show. At first, they lived in San Rafael, then decided to move south to be closer to the movie studios for Harriet and Los Angeles-area nightclubs for Ozzie’s band.

Since summer was approaching, they chose to rent a house in Hermosa Beach, which was close enough to the Culver City studios where Harriet still worked to allow the family to spend the summer together enjoying beach life.

The family would rent the house at 3133 The Strand every year for more than a decade to use as their summer retreat, except in years when they traveled abroad.

In November 1941, they bought a house at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, at 1822 Camino Palmero St. 

Its Cape Cod-style exterior would become familiar to millions when it became part of the opening credits in the early years of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” on television. (When the house was sold after Nelson’s death, the new owners claimed it was haunted by his ghost.) It became the permanent family home for the next three decades.

On Oct. 8, 1944, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” debuted on radio, using child actors to play David and Ricky. Its naturalistic portrayal of everyday American family life was a revelation at the time, and the show was an instant success. It became even more popular after the real Nelson children began portraying themselves in 1949.

According to John R. Holmes’ biography, The Adventures of Ozzie Nelson: The Life and Career of America’s Favorite Pop (McFarland, 2021), after its successful first season on television ended in the spring of 1953, the Nelson family had looked forward to a vacation in Paris to unwind. But, worn out from the rigors of filming, they decided to return to the Hermosa Beach house for the summer instead.

During this welcome break, the 13-year-old “irrepressible” Ricky learned how to dive and how to surf at Hermosa. He would use his diving skills the next season, performing a one-and-a-half somersault on the family TV show.

He and his family also learned about the reach of television fame when total strangers would ring their doorbell, including a four-year-old girl who asked Harriet, “Can Ozzie come out and play?”

The house right on the beach at the western terminus of Longfellow Ave. originally was built in 1905, and has been remodeled many times over the years. It last sold in March 2021 for $7.35 million.

The family’s summers in Hermosa Beach came to an end after the summer of 1955. That year, the Nelsons purchased a lot in the Lagunita section of Laguna Beach, where they built their own permanent summer home.

The elder Nelsons returned to the Lagunita house to relax after “Ozzie and Harriet” ended its then-record 14-year run on network television in 1966. It became the family’s permanent home in 1977, when Harriet sold the Hollywood Hills home two years after Ozzie’s death from cancer in 1975.

Rick Nelson pioneered rock music on television with his appearances on “Ozzie and Harriet” from 1957 onward. (He became “Rick” instead of “Ricky” in 1961.) He went on to a highly successful singing career and became one of the first rock stars to release a country album, “Bright Lights & Country Music” (1966).

He and his touring band died in an airplane crash in 1986. His brother David died from colon cancer in 2011. Harriet Nelson died of congestive heart failure in 1994.

Rick’s sons Matthew and Gunnar formed the successful rock band Nelson in the early 1990s, and daughter Tracy became a successful actress.

A generation of younger baby boomers wondered why Ozzie’s occupation was never mentioned on “Ozzie and Harriet,” leaving it to the older generation to inform them of his pre-TV success as a musician and bandleader.

Sources:

The Adventures of Ozzie Nelson: The Life and Career of America’s Favorite Pop, by John R. Holmes, McFarland and Co., 2021.

Daily Breeze archives.

Footnotes on the Sand: An Incomplete Compendium, an Arbitrary Selection of Events, Rumor, Speculation, Some Fact and Some Fiction About Hermosa Beach, by Patricia A. Gazin, self-published, 1991.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Ozzie, by Ozzie Nelson, Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Wikipedia.

Zillow.com.

Citywide festivals such as Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses, Santa Monica’s Pioneer Days and dozens of smaller city-sponsored annual events served as both tourist attractions and civic promotional opportunities during the first half of the 20th Century.

In 1934, Redondo Beach decided to throw its cowboy hat in the ring by staging its first annual Covered Wagon Days Fiesta. The Wild West-themed event ran for four days, from Thursday, June 21 through Sunday, June 24.

Many of the scheduled events were held in and around Redondo’s seaside amusements area, much of which vanished with the King Harbor redevelopment of the 1960s. 

These included a daily rodeo, a parade, daily carnivals, shooting exhibitions, staged hold-ups and mock hangings of “horse thieves” in the streets and at various businesses, various vaudeville performances and elaborate costume balls at the Elks Club and the seaside Mandarin Ballroom on the weekend.

The initial parade lineup, which featured multiple covered wagons with vintage detailing in addition to bands, floats and equestrian groups, stretched for almost two miles. Musical entertainment included performances by Jimmy and His Saddle Pals and the Montana Cowgirls. Los Angeles County Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz was the guest of honor for the festival.

The highly successful event drew thousands, and returned in 1935. Among the stunts held that year was an overland journey by a group of Redondo Beach businessmen dressed in Western finery to the city of Glendale. 

The attempt to draw attention to the Redondo festival ended up in Pasadena when its participants overshot their destination, much to the confusion of Chamber of Commerce officials in Glendale who were awaiting the sojourners after being warned of their arrival.

After that fiasco, they were given maps to help guide them during their next day’s journey to South Bay and Orange County cities. Despite the mix-up, the 1935 fiesta proved even more successful overall than the inaugural event. 

In 1936, a couple of dunking events made news during the fiesta. First, Mayor Colfax Bell was subjected to immersion for his failure to grow facial hair a week before the festivities even began.

Then, a man identified as Ralph Blanck ended up going to jail during the fiesta. “I’d like to see any twenty-five men throw me in there,” he boasted while watching others get dunked. The men manning the water trough took him up on it and unceremoniously dunked him. He came out of the water unimpressed, still mouthing off to those in charge.

At that point, he was thrown into jail for being drunk and disorderly. He was freed the next day after pleading guilty in court and apologizing to the judge.

More than 200 entrants took part in the rodeos that year, which were held near Beryl St. and Hermosa Ave. Actor and activist Leo Carrillo served as grand marshal for the parade on the fiesta’s final day.

The Empty Saddle Club equestrian association on the Palos Verdes Peninsula stepped up to sponsor the Covered Wagon Days Fiesta in 1937, after its initial sponsor, the South Bay Businessman’s Club, came up short with the necessary funds that year. 

Mayor Bell’s dunking was repeated, this time staged for maximum publicity, with the Los Angeles Times running a large photo of the event.

The city of Torrance, probably impressed by the success of the annual Redondo Beach event, began its own community-wide event in 1938. Called the Factory Frolic, it celebrated the city’s army of industrial workers with parades, balls and other events, and was held annually for the next decade.

Redondo’s Covered Wagon Days returned for what appears to have been its final roundup in 1938. News sources from the era give no explanation as to the reasons for its failure to return after that, but they probably centered on the financial burdens of the event, which had two different sponsors in just four years.

Perhaps coincidentally, San Bernardino started its own Covered Wagon Days event in November 1938.

Daily Breeze readers still held fond recollections of the annual fiesta during the 1990s. Hazel Evans Luke shared the following recollections in  a 1995 letter to the Daily Breeze:

“The Empty Saddle Club was prominent in the parade and rodeo, resplendent in their gold and black satin shirts, on beautiful horses.

My brother, George Evans, was a club member and a participant in the rodeo, riding bulls and broncs and getting knocked out by a bull. He was back riding them again the next day.

Victor McLaglens’ Motorcycle Drill Team also was in the parade and put on a terrific trick-riding show at the rodeo. This took place where the Triangle Shopping Center later stood. Grandstands and animal chutes were set up all around, forming an arena. 

A good spot from which to watch the parade was in front of the El Ja Arms Hotel, down Diamond Street from the Redondo Trading Post.”

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Old Redondo: A Pictorial History of Redondo Beach, California, by Dennis Shanahan, Legends Press, 1982.

Redondo Reflex archives.

Torrance Herald archives.

Standard Oil became the first major oil firm to take advantage of Southern California as a refinery location when it opened the Chevron Refinery in El Segundo in 1911. Standard had found the location more advantageous than its Richmond refinery in the Bay Area.

Its competitors wasted little time in following suit. Union Oil of California, founded in Santa Paula in 1890 and based in Los Angeles, began looking at a site in Wilmington in 1915.

The parcel was situated chiefly on the site of a recent landfill project in the outer harbor at San Pedro known as the Miner Fill. The fill was done to reclaim land for industrial use near the newly minted port, which  became part of Los Angeles in 1909.

The advantages of having Union Oil’s major refinery near the port were obvious. The company could move its refined fuel directly to its shipping terminal on the docks, where it could be moved quickly to market. 

At the time, the company saw the new operation as a way to increase shipments to customers in South America, then a key part of its business. It already had a pipeline in place that ran from its drilling operations near Brea to the port.

In 1916, the company purchased about 234 acres of land on the Miner Fill and neighboring McDonald Ranch. In January 1917, it officially announced plans to build a major refinery estimated to cost $2.5 million and employ more than 400 workers there.

Construction began that September on the first structure, a temporary office building. Work on the refinery’s major structures followed, and the Union Oil Refinery officially went into operation in July 1919 at 1660 W. Anaheim St. in Wilmington.

Fires are a dangerous fact of life at oil refineries. The Union Oil refinery in Wilmington had its share, including a major one in 1920, shortly after it opened. The company’s Brea operations were devastated by a 1926 explosion and fire. As a result of that loss, a smaller refinery was built in Carson. It began operations in 1927.

Another major fire began on Jan. 12, 1951, when one of the refinery’s gasoline tanks exploded. The blaze was visible for miles. 16 of the company’s 1,000 employees were injured, but there were no fatalities. The fire shut down the refinery for several days.

During the fire, the Los Angeles Fire Dept. enlisted the help of its Fire Boat 2, the Ralph J. Scott, stationed in the harbor. It pumped additional water from the harbor up to crews fighting the fire for 30 hours.

A year later in October, workmen were applying red paint to Tank #306 on the tank farm when someone commented that the round-walled natural gas tank now resembled a pumpkin. 

The idea resonated, and it only took more paint, this time orange, black and white, to give the giant tank the appearance of a giant grinning pumpkin, an annual tradition that continues to this day. The painted tank even has its own nickname: Smilin’ Jack. This year, 2022, will mark the 70th anniversary of the Halloween tradition.

Union Oil owned and operated its Wilmington refinery, and its Union 76 gas stations, for 78 years. Those years were not without controversy for the company. It was Union Oil that owned and operated the Southern California offshore well Platform A that blew out in 1969, resulting in the environmentally disastrous Santa Barbara Channel oil spill.

Closer to home, the Liberian oil tanker S.S. Sansinena disaster in 1976 occurred at the Union Oil terminal at Berth 46 in the Port of Los Angeles. The explosion and fire killed 9, injured 46 and caused millions of dollars of damage at the port and in the surrounding area.

In 1983, Union Oil changed its name to Unocal Corp. after a corporate reorganization. In March 1997, Tosco Corp. took over the Wilmington and Carson refineries after purchasing them from Unocal, which had decided to move out of the refining business. Unocal would disappear entirely from the corporate landscape when ChevronTexaco acquired the company in 2005 for $18 billion.

Tosco operated the two local refining entities until 2001, when Phillips Petroleum Co. purchased the company, then the nation’s third largest oil refiner, for $6.87 billion.

Phillips merged with another well-known oil company, Conoco, in 2002, forming ConocoPhillips Co. Citing falling profits from refining operations, Conoco Phillips spun off its refineries in 2012 into a separate company, Phillips 66.

That company continues to operate the Wilmington and Carson refineries under the Phillips 66 name. It also operates gas stations under the Conoco, Union 76 and Phillips 66 names in 44 U.S. states.

The Wilmington and Carson refineries, together now known as the Los Angeles Refinery, produce 139,000 barrels of crude oil and 85,000 barrels of gasoline a day, according to the company’s website.

In February 2021, Phillips 66 agreed to fix leaks at its Wilmington and Carson refineries, keep an accurate database of the work, fund a tree-planting program at the two facilities and perform other work in order to settle a lawsuit brought by the nonprofit group East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. 

The environmental advocacy group had accused the company of failing to do required maintenance meant to prevent toxic gases from spreading into nearby residential areas.

Sources:

“California Oil Refinery History,” California Energy Commission website, March 12, 2021.

Conoco-Phillips website.

“LAFD History – Old Engine 49 and Old Fireboat 2 at the Union Oil Fire – 1951,” Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association website, July 31, 2019.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Phillips 66 website.

San Pedro News Pilot archives.

San Pedro: A Pictorial History, by Henry Silka, San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1984.

Daily Breeze archives.

“Unocal Corporation,” Wikipedia.