On a clear day, you can see Catalina. From noir femme fatales to juice-cleansing hikers, the phrase has been echoed by Angelenos for decades, if not centuries.
Los Angeles' citizens use Santa Catalina Island as a smog barometer, but few know how its pristine natural beauty abided against all odds. Mainland California endured ravages at the hands of those attempting to manifest their own destinies - whether through oil, gold, or fame. Catalina passed through the same phases as the mainland: Indian, Spanish, Mexican, American. It played host to explorers, hunters, miners, ranchers, rancheros, real estate seekers, fishers, soldiers, and yachters. And yet, while the businesses of real estate development and natural resources extraction marred so much of the mainland's natural beauty, Catalina emerged virtually unscathed.
Charles Frederick Holder, author and co-founder of the Tuna Club, described his approach to the island in a passage that is as accurate now as when Holder wrote it 105 years ago.
We are very near it now, sailing due south down the channel Watch the cliffs, how boldly they breast the sea, rising like the grim giants hundreds of feet in air, with thick beards of waving kelp at their base. Great slopes of green stretch away; then a glimpse of white beaches, of breaking waves gnawing at submerged rock; a flash of flying-fish wings; ca ons-rivers of verdure-winding their way skyward; and, far away, the tops of the high mountains of Cabrillo, about whose crests float flecks of cloud in the drowsy air
So how did the island shelter itself from destruction? In that oldest of California customs: a combination of luck and fate.
Moonlight over Catalinas Avalon Bay, circa 1900. Photo courtesy of the California Historical Society Collection - USC Libraries.
Californios, Smugglers, and the End of Mexican California
P o Pico in 1848. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.
When Mexico won its war against Spain, it levied a near-100-percent duty on foreign goods, and smugglers discovered the island. Spanish, French, Russian, English, American, and South American merchants, traders from New England and the Sandwich Islands, men hauling goods from China and even pirates all dropped anchor in Isthmus Cove or Cat Harbor. Under cover of darkness, they unloaded some two-thirds of their wares in caves or buried them in the sand. After sailing on to check in with Mexican customs and pay the tariffs on their lighter loads, they would then return to Catalina, re-load their ships and sail up and down to coast, selling goods to complacent Mexicans and rancheros. In order to maintain the secret outpost, a collective hush fell over the island.
That silence was finally broken by an American ship captain named Thomas Robbins who asked for the island and was granted it as a personal favor from P o Pico in one of Pico's last acts as governor of Mexican California. Thus began a long succession of private owners.
Civil War and Gold Diggers In 1863-64, around the time real estate investor James Lick - owner of Rancho Los Feliz and proprietor of San Francisco's Lick House hotel - purchased the island, gold was discovered on Catalina. Lick attempted to keep squatters at bay, but to no avail. Mining shafts (which can still be seen today) shot through July Valley and Cherry Valley. Lick was fighting a losing battle, until a greater battle won out.
The Civil War then gripped the United States, and many residents of Los Angeles sympathized with the Confederacy. The federal government became paranoid that Confederate privateers would use the island as a meeting place. In 1864 it issued an evacuation order for the island and built a military barracks, still visible today, at the isthmus. So, unlike the rest of the Golden State, prospectors had only one year to plunder Catalina.
Max Strobel was discovered dead in his hotel room mere hours before he was to sell Catalina Island to a London-based mining syndicate. Courtesy of the Anaheim Public Library Photograph Collection on Anaheim Local History.
After the war, Lick determined to realize the island's financial potential once and for all. He used the gold-diggers' shafts to claim the existence of silver, lead, and zinc deposits and enlisted Anaheim's first mayor, Major Max Strobel, to sell the island to an English syndicate with plans to mine the whole of the island. Catalina, it seemed, would finally suffer the same ore mining wreaked upon so many of California's mountains.
Strobel sailed to London to close the deal with the syndicate and collect the price of 200,000 pounds. However, he never appeared at the meeting; instead, he was discovered dead in his hotel room that morning. The cause of death was unknown.
Strobel's failed mission recalled an earlier attempt to rob the island of its riches. In 1828 a pioneer named Samuel Prentiss found himself shipwrecked near San Pedro. Dazed and confused, Prentiss walked to the San Gabriel mission, where he was told by one of the Tongva people that a mound of Indian treasure and pirate plunder was buried under a tree on the island. He drew up a map and caught a boat, but on his voyage a strong wind caught the vessel and the map fluttered overboard. He never found the loot.
The Black Jack Mine shaft on Catalina Island, 1935. Photo courtesy of the USC Libraries - California Historical Society Collection.
World War and Fishing Freaks At the turn of the century, Catalina changed hands once again and, with the building of the town of Avalon and the Hotel Metropole, California high society came together to fish for sport.
Charles Holder in his study. Courtesy of the Pasadena Public Library.
Unsustainable fishing has long been a problem on the West Coast, one with origins that predate legal environmental standards. Charles Frederick Holder, a pas
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On a clear day, you can see Catalina. From noir femme fatales to juice-cleansing hikers, the phrase has been echoed by Angelenos for decades, if not centuries.
