Avalon Harbor and Hillside, Santa Catalina Island, 1950s

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Avalon Harbor and Hillside, Santa Catalina Island, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Avalon Harbor and Hillside, Santa Catalina Island, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-0D43AE

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Catalina Island sold itself to Southern Californians in the 1950s as the nearest approximation to a Mediterranean escape reachable by a two-hour ferry ride, and Avalon delivered: a compact harbor town climbing a steep brown hillside, its white buildings stepping up toward the ridge the way resort towns do when there is nowhere else to go. The pier stretching across the waterfront and the small boats clustered at its edge were the machinery of a day-trip economy that had been running since the Wrigley family bought the island in 1919 and decided a chewing-gum fortune deserved an island.

The Church of Santa Catalina, with its distinctive pointed tower, marks the residential slope above the waterfront, and beyond it the hill climbs bare and dry to the ridgeline in the way of every Southern California coastal range — terrain that looks like a postcard from a distance and like a fire risk up close. Pedal boats sit orange and idle at the water's edge, ready to rent to visitors who would then discover, about eight minutes in, that pedaling a boat is more work than it appears.

Whoever took this view from the heights above town had found the standard overlook vantage that every Avalon visitor was pointed toward, the one that made the harbor look like a discovery rather than a ferry destination with a souvenir shop on every block.

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