of the U.S. Fleet and one of the nation's five great ports, frequented
by thousands of chunky freighters, trim passenger ships, and fishing
vessels of many kinds. In 1938 some 5,700 large ships tied up at its
piers and wharves to discharge and load cargoes valued at a billion
dollars; oil products and manufactures constituted most of the export
trade ; raw and semi-raw materials for use of industry comprised 75
per cent of the imports.
The two harbor communities of SAN PEDRO (90 alt., 46,685
pop.), and WILMINGTON (25 alt., 13,946 pop.), originally known
as New San Pedro, were independent cities until 1909 when they were
absorbed by Los Angeles, which organized a Harbor District governed
by a board of five commissioners, appointed by the mayor. This board
manages the muncipal port facilities, which comprise 95 per cent of
2l6 LOS ANGELES
those in the harbor. On the west the harbor is protected by the San
Pedro Hills and Point Fermin, from which extends a long breakwater,
in two sections, protecting it on the south and east. The opening
between the two sections, marked by the Breakwater Lighthouse, pro-
vides passage into the Outer Harbor. Here the U.S. Battle Fleet
(see Long Beach), with tenders and supply, repair, and hospital ships,
rides at anchor for many months of the year. Between San Pedro and
Terminal Island a deep channel leads into the Inner Harbor, where
ships are manoeuvered in the large turning basin and warped into the
slips and docks that, like saw teeth, jut out from the water front at
Wilmington, four miles inland, the port's chief freight and passenger
terminal. On Terminal Island, a man-made improvement, are large
docks, boat-building and repair yards, and colorful Fish Harbor. East
of the island, Cerritos Channel leads to the Inner Harbor of Long
Beach (see Long Beach).
A bustling port, notwithstanding its somewhat somnolent air, San
Pedro is the older, larger, and more colorful of the two communities.
Along the water front are faded brick buildings of the first decade of
the century; the residential district spreads back up the hills known as
the Palos Verdes (green woods). Stores along the front streets display
nautical gear of every kind denim jackets,' duffle bags, sheath knives,
spyglasses, and gargantuan dice. Here are tattoo parlors, ''wing-ding
joints," semi-secret gambling dives where sailors challenge fortune at
cards, roulette, fan-tan, and almost any other game. Everywhere are
union halls and posters, for the water front is strongly unionized and
thoroughly conscious of its strength. The numerous bars are dis-
tinctive in character and name. In an erstwhile bank old salts, and
young, straddle stools of steel tube before white marble counters as the
"banker" replenishes his stocks from the vaults, where he keeps his
liquid assets, often more negotiable than other kinds of bonded stuff.
The Silver Dollar saloon has murals by a Chinese who, on completing
them, shot himself. Whispering Joe's, Shanghai Red's, and Scuttle
Butt Inn are popular. At Goodfellow's huge Scandinavian seamen
dance solemnly with one another to wheezy tunes played on an
accordion. The maritime workers of San Pedro include Japanese,
Jugoslavs, Czechs, Italians, Portuguese, Mexicans, and Scandinavians;
the last are the largest group, but these grandsons of the men who
sailed the Seven Seas in the days of the old square-riggers have so
intermarried with other groups that racially they are now scarcely dis-
tinguishable.
South of the Pacific Electric Line's interurban depot, a low gray
structure with arcades, through which flows a ceaseless tide of eager
tourists and blase wanderers, are fish wharves; beyond are old sun-
blistered, pumpkin-yellow buildings, once a station and wharf, at pres-
ent abandoned to two battered South Sea trading schooners. Nearby,
lumberyards occupy a strip of sand known as "Mexican Beach," the
hangout of beachcombers and swimmers. Here is "Mexican Holly-
wood," a collection of shacks, periodically the scene of much nocturnal
THE HARBOR: SAN PEDRO AND WILMINGTON 217
revelry, and "Happy Valley," home of seamen between voyages to
distant ports.
San Pedro has long talked of the sea and its lore, and old tars tell
and retell tales of dope-running, rum-running, alien-smuggling, spy
scares, police and gang raids on gambling dens operated on barges
offshore, weird murders on yachts bound for the "isles of somewhere,"
buried treasure, such mysterious vanishings as that of the Belle Isle
off the Galapagos in 1935, an d many a shipwreck since the day in 1828
when a "Santa Ana" blew the brig Danube ashore here, the first to be
piled up in the harbor.
Wilmington, an offshoot of San Pedro, has had a less colorful and
more businesslike career. Established to handle heavy freight, it still
serves that function. Ocean-going ships tie up here to discharge and
take on goods and passengers. Around the wharves and piers are streets
lined with shipping offices and warehouses storing goods from all parts
of the world.
The recorded history of the area dates back to 1542, when Cabrillo
sailed his leaky little craft into the harbor, which he named La Bahia de
los Fumos (bay of smokes), for the Indian fires on the slopes of Palos
Verdes. A map maker years later identified it as La Bahia de San
Pedro to commemorate Vizcaino's arrival on November 26, 1602, the
feast day of St. Peter. During the closing years of the i8th century
Spanish rancheros shipped produce from the bay. In 1808 Captain
William Shaler, a fur trader, sailed in with the first Yankee ship, Lelia
Byrd, and although trade with foreigners was forbidden by the au-
thorities, Yankee skippers continued to come, for the rancheros and
even the padres were anxious to trade hides and tallow for manufac-
tured goods.
A description of the harbor in 1838 has been left us by Richard
Henry Dana in his Two Years Before the Mast: ". . . there was no
sign of a town. What had brought us into such a place we could not
conceive . . . we lay exposed to every wind that could blow. I
learned to my surprise that the desolate looking place was the best
place on the whole coast . . . and about thirty miles in the interior
. . . was the Pueblo de Los Angeles." San Pedro had developed
somewhat when Major Horace Bell wrote in 1853 that it was a "great
place; it had no streets, for none were necessary. There were two
mud scows, a ship's anchor and a fishing boat . . . broken down Mexi-
can carts, a house, a large haystack and a mule corral." When Dana
returned in 1859 he found a wharf, two or three warehouses, and a
stagecoach, which plied daily between the port and the pueblo.
The early development of the harbor was in large part the work
of Phineas Banning, who came to California in 1851 and soon estab-
lished freighting service between San Pedro and the pueblo. To gain
an advantage over his one competitor, he bought part of the old Rancho
San Pedro on the inner bay, closer to Los Angeles, and there built a
wharf and warehouse, founding what was known as New San Pedro
2 1 8 LOS ANGELES
in 1858. A gale hastened its development, for it wrecked Banning's
wharf at San Pedro and he transferred all his activities to the new
port. Every day Banning, wearing red suspenders, labored at the
wharf and his booming voice dispatched an increasing number of carts
and coaches up the dusty road to the pueblo. For a few years New
San Pedro surpassed its parent port both in population and tonnage
handled. During the Civil War the United States Army quartered
troops in the town, and in 1863, when its population of soldiers and
civilians approximated 6,000, the State legislature renamed the town
for Wilmington, Del., Banning's birthplace. In 1868 a railroad was
built to Los Angeles, but the following year the Southern Pacific pur-
chased the road and extended it to San Pedro. Coastwise vessels thus
could load from "ship to car," and San Pedro regained its ascendancy,
although the coming of the railroads and the growth of population
brought commerce enough to make both ports prosperous. Wilmington
was incorporated as a city in 1872; San Pedro, in 1888.
The development of tremendous man-made Los Angeles Harbor
from mud flats and salt marshes is a dramatic story. In 1858 small
steamers and sailing vessels from San Francisco and South America
anchored offshore while their cargo was discharged into lighters. Ban-
ning dredged the inner harbor, by a crude system of two boats and
rakes, which were dragged along the bottom of the channel, loosening
silt, which the tide carried out to sea. But in spite of this work and
the dredging of the San Pedro main channel to a depth of 16 feet in
1871, the port remained a shallow basin with little protection from
the sea. The Federal government completed a jetty between Terminal
Island (then Rattlesnake Island) and Dead Man's Island in 1893, but
a bitter controversy developed as to whether a harbor should be con-
structed here or at Santa Monica (see Pueblo to Metropolis). U.S.
Senator Stephen M. White, "father" of the harbor, overcame opposi-
tion in Washington, and the first rock of the new breakwater was
dumped off Point Fermin in 1899. At the turn of the century the port
was handling 200,000 tons a year, a four-fold increase since 1871, and
two railroads had terminals at the harbor. Increased business and
harbor facilities brought the two ports together, and in 1909 they were
annexed by Los Angeles and consolidated as the Harbor District. To-
day, Los Angeles is one of our five largest seaports.
During recent years the harbor has been involved in the struggle
along the Pacific between maritime unions and shipowners. A 100-
day strike in 1937 achieved substantial gains for labor and unification
of the unions under the leadership of the militant longshoremen's union,
which led most of the maritime unions into the Congress of Industrial
Organization. Fishermen have likewise unionized themselves both in
the CIO and the American Federation of Labor, and a close bond now
unites fishermen, longshoremen, seamen, marine engineers, bartenders,
and all engaged in wresting a livelihood from their common friend
and enemy, the sea.
THE HARBOR: SAN PEDRO AND WILMINGTON 219
POINTS OF INTEREST
SAN PEDRO
The CIVIC CENTER, Harbor Blvd. and Beacon, 6th and gth
Sts., lies on the west side of the Main Channel. Its buildings are
grouped about the northern end of the tree-studded Plaza, which
extends southward to I3th Street. The Plaza offers a good view of
the i,ooofoot MAIN CHANNEL between San Pedro and Terminal
Island shore lines, which leads from the Outer Harbor to a i,6oo-foot
turning basin bounded by Smith's, Mormon, and Terminal Islands.
At the turning basin the channel branches to the West and East basins
of the Inner Harbor.
1. Dominating the Civic Center, at its northeast corner, is the six-
story, tan-brick BRANCH CITY HALL, 638 S. Beacon St., built in
1928 to house the Harbor Department offices and various branch units
of the Los Angeles municipal government.
2. The new UNITED STATES CUSTOMS HOUSE AND
POST OFFICE, Beacon and 9th Sts., a three-story, reinforced-con-
crete structure completed in 1935, faces the park on the west side.
In the lobby is a 4O-foot mural by Fletcher Martin, depicting the
evolution in the transportation of mail in various parts of the country.
The post office and various Federal bureaus are quartered in this
building.
3. The UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION STATION (open
9-4:30), foot of 22nd St., is a two-story building of gray stucco, with
barred windows and an adjoining "bull pen," through which annually
pass 15,000 aliens, 60 per cent of whom are Orientals.
4. The MARINE EXCHANGE LOOKOUT STATION (not
open), on the roof of the six-story Municipal Warehouse No. I, Pier
No. i, foot of Signal St., is a square glass-enclosed compartment
equipped with a powerful telescope by which ships are identified an
hour before they arrive at Breakwater Light. Flag signals are used
to communicate with ships during the day; a blinker-light system is
employed at night.
5. At the tip of Pier No. i, within full view of Outer Harbor ship
traffic, is the two-story cement building of the PILOT STATION
(not open), headquarters of pilots skilled in navigating the Inner
Harbor.
6. At the U.S. NAVY LANDING, 22nd St. at the head of East
Channel, officers and men from the warships land in gigs and longboats
for shore leave; visitors embark here for the dreadnaughts and cruisers
anchored in the Outer Harbor (Sun. and holidays only, 1-4; transpor-
tation free).
The 45O-foot U.S. COAST GUARD PIER, foot of Outer St., in
Watchorn Basin, is the headquarters of the local unit of the Coast
Guard, which has a force of 150 officers and men, two 1 65-foot patrol
boats, and five smaller craft; the unit patrols the coast from the Mexi-
22O LOS ANGELES
can border to Point Buchon, north of Santa Barbara. Its gray patrol
boats, Aurora and Hermes, carry three guns each, mounted on the
main deck, are equipped with powerful searchlights and radio trans-
mitters, and fly the red-barred Coast Guard flag with its motto, Semper
Paratus (L., always ready). When planes are needed for an emer-
gency, such as removing a sick or injured person from a vessel at sea,
a call is made on the air base at San Diego, also part of the southern
California section, for one of 'its five amphibian planes. Coast Guard
activities here, once chiefly concerned with rum-running, now center
on the preservation of life and property and the enforcement of customs
and navigation laws.
FORT MacARTHUR, LOWER RESERVATION (open, ex-
cept during artillery practice), 244 acres set aside in 1916 and named
in honor of General Douglas MacArthur, former military governor
of the Philippine Islands, lies on a bluff overlooking West Channel
and Outer Harbor. Ranged around three sides of the five-acre parade
ground are stucco and frame bungalows occupied by officers of the 63rd
Coast Artillery (anti-aircraft) and the Third Coast Artillery. Bar-
racks for enlisted men, the commissary and supply departments, mess
halls and garages are massed along the east side. The garrison ranges
from 700 to 800 officers and men. In the reservation are two 1 4-inch
guns weighing 365 tons each; mounted on railway carriages, they are
21 feet high, 95 feet long, and fire steel i,56o-pound projectiles at a
muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second over 30 miles per minute.
POINTS OF INTEREST
San Pedro Wilmington
1. Branch City Hall 12. Old Government Supply
2. U. S. Customs House and Warehouse
Post Office 13. Santa Catalina Island Ter-
3. U. S. Immigration Station minal
4. Marine Exchange Lookout 14. Drum Barracks
Station 15. General Banning House
5. Pilot Station 16. Ford Motor Co. Assembly
6. U. S. Navy Landing Plant
7. Statue of Cabrillo 17. Cerritos Channel Drawbridge
8. Bathhouse Terminal Island
9. Boathouse 18. Southern California Edison
10. Government Lighthouse Co. Steam Plant
11. Los Angeles Shipbuilding and 19. Marine Meteorological Ob-
Drydock Corp. Plant servatory
20. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp.
Plant
21. Federal Regional Penitentiary
LOS ANGELES
HARBOR
222 LOS ANGELES
CABRILLO BEACH PARK, foot of Stephen M. White Dr.
(open 6 a.m. to midnight), named in honor of Juan Rodriguez Ca-
brillo, is a recreational area with beach, park, and playground facili-
ties.
7. A nine-foot concrete monolithic STATUE OF CABRILLO is the
central piece of a circular landscaped plaza in the park.
8. A white stucco BATHHOUSE (rates, 10^-25$) , is at the right
of the statue. In the seaward chambers of the building is the CABRILLO
BEACH MUSEUM (open 9-5; free), a municipal institution exhibiting
specimens of marine and shore life along the Pacific coast.
9. A stucco BOATHOUSE left of the bathhouse, with a wooden pier
for small craft, maintains boat service to an offshore fishing barge
(rates vary).
The U. S. GOVERNMENT BREAKWATER extends in two
detached sections from the tip of the San Pedro headland at Cabrillo
Beach to a point opposite the mouth of the Los Angeles Flood Control
Channel, a distance of almost five miles. The curving n,ooo-foot
section between Cabrillo Beach and Breakwater Light was begun in
1899 and completed in 1912 at a cost of $3,000,000. The second sec-
tion, a continuation of the first, cost $5,600,000. Both sections consist
of rock fill almost 200 feet wide at the base, tapering to a width of
20 feet at the top, which stands 14 feet above the sea at low tide. At
the seaward end of the first section is Breakwater Light, built in 1913,
having a 110,000 candlepower beam visible 14 miles.
POINT FERMIN PARK, extending (R) along Paseo del Mar
(driveway along the sea), a 28-acre expanse of tree-shaded lawns on the
rugged bluffs of Point Fermin, has sheltered pergolas, a promenade
along the edge of the palisade, and a picnic ground. The park, ac-
quired in 1923, bears the name of Point Fermin, which was so-named
in 1784 for Padre Fermin Francisco Lasuen, who succeeded to the
presidency of the California missions on the death of Padre Junipero
Serra.
10. The old GOVERNMENT LIGHTHOUSE on the point, built
in 1874 and still in use, throws a 6,000 candlepower beam visible for
1 8 miles.
The i76-acre FORT MacARTHUR UPPER RESERVATION
(not open), on the rolling seaward slopes of the Palos Verdes Hills
behind Paseo del Mar, and Gaffey St., was acquired between 1910 and
1921 as a site for modern fortifications in the harbor defense program.
Within the enclosing wire fence, concealed behind low hills, are mas-
sive guns, their number and caliber guarded as military secrets. Along
the Gaffey Street side are barracks, supply houses, and garages.
n. The LOS ANGELES SHIPBUILDING AND DRYDOCK
CORPORATION PLANT (adm. by arrangement}, West Basin
north of the San Pedro business district, includes a floating drydock
with a lifting capacity of 12,000 tons, shipyards, wharves for ship re-
pair, and facilities for the construction and repair of all types of
vessels.
THE HARBOR: SAX PEDRO AND WILMINGTON 223
WILMINGTON
12. The OLD GOVERNMENT SUPPLY WAREHOUSE (not
open), Fries Ave. and A St., the oldest building in Wilmington, is a
huge barnlike structure of shiplap construction, held together by square
handmade nails; the roof ridge is topped with three square cupolas.
Built in 1858, when Drum Barracks was still a tent camp, the ware-
house was used to store supplies consigned to Army posts.
13. From the huge concrete and corrugated iron SANTA CATA-
LINA ISLAND TERMINAL, foot of Avalon Blvd., ships annually
carry between 500,000 and 650,000 pleasure seekers to Santa Catalina
Island (see Tour 5 A). The landing for hydroplanes to Santa Cata-
lina Island is at the head of Slip 5, west of the ship terminal.
14. At the entrance to DRUM BARRACKS, 1053-55 Gary Ave.
(open by arrangement}, a cypress archway is inscribed "Officers Quar-
ters 1862-68, U.S. Army Supply Depot for Southern California, Ari-
zona and New Mexico, U.S. Department of the Southwest." The
white building is covered with vines and surrounded by palms, cypress,
and pepper trees. The main building and two rearward wings contain
14 rooms; those in front have high ceilings in the stately manner of
the i86o's. The barracks, the second oldest building in Wilmington,
was constructed from timbers cut at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
Navy Yard in 1861, shipped around Cape Horn, and raised by army
men in 1862 on a 4O-acre site acquired by the Government from
Phineas Banning for one dollar. In a rear patio, bright with greenery,
is an old ivy-covered well with mossy rope and oaken bucket; the well
has been transformed into a shallow goldfish pond.
The barracks, named for General Richard Colton Drum, whose
son, General Hugh Drum, planned the military fortifications in
Hawaii, were built both as a base for operations against the Indians
and to overawe the Secessionist movement in southern California. Here
was the terminus of the first telegraph in the Southwest, and of the
Government's short-lived camel service (see Tour 2), between the
barracks and Tucson, Arizona. During the early years of the Civil
War, between 200 and 400 soldiers were quartered here. With the
subjugation of the Indians in the late i86o's the barracks were aban-
doned and the land returned to Banning. The remaining building is
now a private residence.
BANNING PARK, M and O Sts., Eubank and Lakme Aves.,
perpetuates the memory of Phineas Banning. The 2O-acre tract, ac-
quired in 1927 from the Banning heirs, retains its quiet old-fashioned
charm, with its white picket fence and tree-lined walks.
15- The old GENERAL BANNING HOUSE (not open), in the
park, is a white three-story, i8-room mansion, with a two-story portico.
The mansion, still sturdy and well-preserved, has been a landmark in
the harbor district for more than half a century. To the rear is a
frame stable and carriage house, with a collection of surreys, buggies,
and carriages, and a stagecoach that saw service in Banning's California
224 LOS ANGELES
Stage Company. An old brick reservoir, 50 feet in diameter, west of
the mansion, has been converted into a picnic ground. Used for
storing water in the Spanish rancho days, its circular brick wall has
been fitted with windows and doors, and the interior, open to the
sky, has a pergola supporting bougainvillaea and other vines. A stream
meanders through the park, widening at places into small lagoons. On
the playground to the east are softball, tennis, basketball, and horseshoe
courts, a gymnasium, a children's playfield, and an auditorium with a
dance floor.
The derricks of the WILMINGTON OIL FIELD, scattered
throughout the Wilmington residential district from O Street on the
north to Fries Avenue on the west, become a veritable forest of rigs
on either side of Henry Ford Avenue, south of Anaheim Street. In
July 1938 the field had 483 producing wells, with a combined yield of
95,000 barrels per day. The discovery well was spudded in April 26,
1936.
1 6. The FORD MOTOR COMPANY ASSEMBLY PLANT
(open by arrangement} , 700 Henry Ford Ave., lies on reclaimed marsh-
land athwart the Los Angeles-Long Beach boundary line, and assembles
automobiles and manufactures parts. At capacity production the plant
assembles 400 cars daily and employs 2,500 men.
17. The 270-foot CERRITOS CHANNEL DRAWBRIDGE, of
the counterpoised or bascule type, foot of Henry Ford Avenue, is the
only bridge to Terminal Island.
TERMINAL ISLAND, reached also by ferries from San Pedro,
foot of Terminal Way (5$; 25$ per car, 5$ per passenger), is largely
man-made, representing an investment of $12,000,000. Six miles long,
from one-half to three-quarters of a mile wide, the island is lined along
the Inner Harbor and part of the Outer Harbor shore with docks,
wharves, slips, factories, oil plants, a Federal prison, and offices. Its
western two-thirds lie in Los Angeles; the eastern third, in Long
Beach.
1 8. The SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON COMPANY
STEAM PLANT (open by arrangement weekdays 8-3), on a 43-
acre tract at the east end of Terminal Island, consists of three white
concrete buildings with slender concrete stacks, the highest rising
262 feet. Gigantic boilers burning natural gas piped from the Kettle-
man Hills 215 miles distant convert 20 tons of water into steam
every minute. The towers carrying the high voltage cables across
Cerritos Channel are 310 feet high, overtopping all structures in the
harbor.
The new U.S. FLEET AIR BASE (adm. by arrangement), Sea-
side Avenue to the edge of the Outer Harbor, includes a concrete sea-
plane haul-out ramp, planes, a landing and tender wharf, a dredged
seaplane anchorage protected by an i,8oo-foot rock jetty, two runways
for land planes, and a corrugated iron hangar, the first of several to be
built. There are also men's dormitories, mess halls, officers' quarters,
quartermaster and administration buildings.
THE HARBOR: SAN PEDRO AND WILMINGTON 225
19. The MARINE METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORY
(not open), at the E. end of Cannery St., operated jointly by the Los
Angeles Harbor Department and the California Institute of Tech-
nology (see Pasadena) on a 24-hour schedule, issues storm warnings
and weather data to mariners. Through its associate staff of students
and scientists from the California Institute of Technology, it conducts
research in meteorology, aerology, climatology, oceanography, modern
weather forecasting, and fog studies. The U.S. Navy uses its findings
in making weather maps for use of airplane pilots.
FISH HARBOR, an artificial inlet on the south side of Terminal
Island, protected by inner and outer moles, is the center of Los Angeles'