Santa Monica

Santa Monica (Spanish for 'Saint Monica') is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is bordered on five sides by different neighborhoods of the city of Los Angeles: Pacific Palisades to the north, Brentwood on the northeast, West Los Angeles on the east, Mar Vista on the southeast, and Venice on the south. The 2010 U.S. Census population was 89,736. Due to a favorable climate and close proximity to Los Angeles, Santa Monica became a famed resort town by the early 20th century attracting many celebrities, like Marion Davies, to build magnificent beach front homes on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH).

The city has experienced a boom since the late 1980s through the revitalization of its downtown core, significant job growth and increased tourism. Popular tourists sites include Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier and Palisades Park atop a bluff over the Pacific Ocean.

Like other coastal beach communities, coastal erosion due to coastal infrastructure and high human usage is an increasing challenge, and will become worse due to sea level rise. Santa Monica has a history of developing environmental and sustainability strategies, with the most recent focus on community-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 or sooner.

Santa Monica was inhabited by the Tongva people. Santa Monica was called Kecheek in the Tongva language.[self-published source?] The first non-indigenous group to set foot in the area was the party of explorer Gaspar de Portolà, who camped near the present-day intersection of Barrington and Ohio Avenues on August 3, 1769. Named after the Christian Saint Monica, there are two different accounts of how the city's name came to be. One says it was named in honor of the feast day of Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), but her feast day is May 4. Another version says it was named by Juan Crespí on account of a pair of springs, the Kuruvungna Springs (Serra Springs), that were reminiscent of the tears Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety.

An 1840 Santa Monica adobe home (photographed in 1890).

Following the Mexican–American War, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave Mexicans and Californios living in state certain unalienable rights. US government sovereignty in California began on February 2, 1848.

A busy day on the beach, 1880

In the 1870s, the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad connected Santa Monica with Los Angeles, and a wharf out into the bay. The first town hall was an 1873 brick building, later a beer hall, and now part of the Santa Monica Hostel. It is Santa Monica's oldest extant structure. By 1885, the town's first hotel was the Santa Monica Hotel.

Amusement piers became popular in the first decades of the 20th century and the extensive Pacific Electric Railroad brought people to the city's beaches from across the Greater Los Angeles Area.

Exterior view of the Bank Building at the corner of Third Street and Broadway, Santa Monica, ca. 1900

Around the start of the 20th century, a growing population of Asian Americans lived in and around Santa Monica and Venice. A Japanese fishing village was near the Long Wharf while small numbers of Chinese lived or worked in Santa Monica and Venice. The two ethnic minorities were often viewed differently by White Americans who were often well-disposed towards the Japanese but condescending towards the Chinese. The Japanese village fishermen were an integral economic part of the Santa Monica Bay community.

Ocean Park Bathhouse

Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. built a plant in 1922 at Clover Field (Santa Monica Airport) for the Douglas Aircraft Company. In 1924, four Douglas-built planes took off from Clover Field to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. Two planes returned after covering 27,553 miles (44,342 km) in 175 days, and were greeted on their return September 23, 1924, by a crowd of 200,000. The Douglas Company (later McDonnell Douglas) kept facilities in the city until the 1970s.

The Great Depression hit Santa Monica deeply. One report gives citywide employment in 1933 of just 1,000. Hotels and office building owners went bankrupt. In the 1930s, corruption infected Santa Monica (along with neighboring Los Angeles). The federal Works Project Administration helped build several buildings, most notably City Hall. The main Post Office and Barnum Hall (Santa Monica High School auditorium) were also among other WPA projects.

Douglas's business grew with the onset of World War II, employing as many as 44,000 people in 1943. To defend against air attack, set designers from the Warner Brothers Studios prepared elaborate camouflage that disguised the factory and airfield. The RAND Corporation began as a project of the Douglas Company in 1945, and spun off into an independent think tank on May 14, 1948. RAND acquired a 15-acre (61,000 m2) campus across the street from the Civic Center and is still there today.

The completion of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1958 eliminated Belmar, the first African American community in the city, and the Santa Monica Freeway in 1966 decimated the Pico neighborhood that had been a leading African American enclave on the Westside.

Beach volleyball is believed to have been developed by Duke Kahanamoku in Santa Monica during the 1920s.

Santa Monica has two hospitals: Saint John's Health Center and Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Its cemetery is Woodlawn Memorial.

Santa Monica has several local newspapers including Santa Monica Daily Press, Santa Monica Mirror, Santa Monica Star, and Santa Monica Observer.