Santa Monica, California

A city in the western Los Angeles, California, USA, that is beachfront property and is located on the Santa Monica bay is no less than Santa Monica itself. This city has Los Angeles bordering it on three different sides. Towards the north is the city of Los Angeles, Pacific Palsades, on the northeast there is Brentwood, to the West Los Angeles towards the east, as far as Mar Vista, it is to the southeast, and towards the south there is Venice. According to the California’s Census Bureau its population in the year of 2010 was at 89,736. Partly due to it having a climate that everyone could enjoy, it had been deemed as a resort town early on in the 20^th century. It was in the late 1980’s when it began to experience a boom and continued to do so because of the revitalization that was happening to the core of its downtown. Tourism had increased due to the large growth in jobs. To this day, Pacific Park and the Santa Monica Pier are still popular destinations.

Inhibited by the Tongva people for the longest time, it had been called Kecheek (which is the Tongva language). The explorer’s, Gaspar de Portola` had camped close to the what is now the intersection of Barrington & Ohio Avenues in the year of 1769, on August 3^rd. The city was named after a Christian saint, with there being two ways as to why this name come to happen and one of those ways was because some say it had been named in order to honor Saint Monica’s (known as the mother of Saint Augustine) feast of the day, however, that feast did not take place until May the 4^th. The second way is that some have said that it had once been named the Kuruvungna Springs (Serra Springs) by Juan Crespi due to it a pair of springs which resembled Saint Monica’s tears that had been cried over her son after his early impiety.

There were many battles by the Californios of Los Angeles. After the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed by Mexico and this allowed both Mexicans and Californios who were residing within the state specific unalienable rights. On February 2^nd, in the year of 1848 the United States government sovereignty commenced in California. During the 1870’s Santa Monica and Los Angeles had been connected to one another with the Los Angeles and the Independence Railroad by a wharf that had been ran out of the bay. The now Santa Monica Hostel happens to be one of the city’s oldest extant structures, as it was initially built as a1873 brick building which became the town hall, and later it turned into a beer hall. Later, in 1885, it became the city’s first hotel and was known as the Santa Monica Hotel. During the first 20 or 30 years of the 20^th century a huge popularity were the amusement piers, along with the Pacific Electric Railroad which would carry people to the beaches of the city and take them across the entire area of the Greater Los Angeles.

The Asian American population begin to grow at the beginning of the 20^th century in the area of This city, including Venice. There was a small amount of Chinese who lived in a Japanese fishing village that was located close to the Long Wharf, and they would work, and they live in one or the other of these cities. It was not unusual for the two ethnic minorities to be seen as different by the White Americans, that were often condescending of the Chinese. However, the village of Japanese fishermen were a significant economic part for the community of Santa Monica Bay. There was a plant built in 1922 by Donald Wills Douglas, Sr., which was located at what is now the Santa Monica Airport and it was referred to as Clover Field, this was done for the aircraft company of The Douglas family. There were four planes built by Douglas and they all left Clover Field airport in 1924 in attempt to be the first to view the world from the sky. Two of those plans returned on September the 23^rd, after 175 days, they had covered 27,552 miles (44,342 km), and they were greeted by a crowed of approximately 200,000. The facilities remained in the same place until the 1960’s and later was renamed McDonnell Douglas.

During the Great Depression, Santa Monica was hit pretty hard. There was a report in 1933 that stated the employment there consists of only 1,000 at the time. People that owned offices and hotels were going bankrupt. In the 1930’s, corruption not only infected this city, but it also effected its neighboring city of Los Angeles. However, when World War II first began Douglas’s airplane business employed 44,000 workers during 1943, as they were growing astronomically. The factory and the airfield were both camouflage by the Warner Brother studios in order to make it unrecognizable from the air. In 1945, the Douglas Company started a project that turned into the RAND Corporation and suddenly became independent as of May the 14^th, in the year of 1948. Later, the RAND obtained 15 acres (61,000 m²) between the pier entrance and the Civic Center.

Here are several interesting facts:

When the Santa Monica Freeway was completed in 1966, along with it came a promise of great prosperity, this was one of the African American enclaves for the Westside, which was done at the cost of tearing down the Pico neighborhood. It is also believed that in the 1920’s Duke Kahanamoku created beach volleyball. Santa Monica is mainly sitting on a flat slope which is angled downwards going towards Ocean Avenue, and from there it goes to the south. Its climate is similar to the coastal Mediterranean, with approximately 310 days out of 365 days are full of sunshine. This city made its first proposal to have a Sustainability City Plan in the year of 1992 and two years afterwards, in the year of 1994, became the first city throughout the entire nation.