The story of the Hill

• First peoples

  The Tongva Hill

  For thousands of years the Peninsula's coves and springs supported Tongva (Gabrielino) communities — including the village of Chowigna at Malaga Cove, remembered today by a plaque near the site — who fished the kelp beds and traded across the channel to Pimu, Catalina. Shell middens along the bluffs still mark their long tenure.

• 1542

  Sails off the Point

  Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo's expedition coasts the Peninsula — the first Europeans to record the smoky shoreline of San Pedro Bay.

• 1846

  Rancho de los Palos Verdes

  After decades of Sepúlveda family occupation, José Loreto and Juan Sepúlveda receive formal title to the 31,000-acre rancho — "the green trees" — running cattle over the entire Hill. Drought, debt, and decades of partition litigation unwind the rancho within a generation — the courtroom carve-up that makes the Bixby purchase possible.

• 1869

  The whalers of Portuguese Bend

  Azorean Portuguese whalemen build a shore station at the cove that takes their name, hunting migrating gray whales from small boats and rendering the blubber in great iron tryworks. Captain Frank Anderson's crews produce 2,166 barrels of oil from 1874 to 1877 before the station closes — California Historical Landmark No. 381, and the Hill's first industry.

• 1882

  The Bixby years

  Jotham Bixby acquires most of the Peninsula for sheep and cattle; dry-farming leases follow, and Japanese immigrant farmers begin coaxing beans, peas, and tomatoes from the terraced slopes.

• 1913

  Vanderlip's gamble

  New York banker Frank A. Vanderlip leads a syndicate that buys 16,000 acres — nearly the whole Hill — reportedly sight unseen. Walking the crest for the first time, he compares the coast to Amalfi and begins planning "a millionaires' colony" with the Olmsted Brothers landscape firm.

• 1922

  The Project & the City of Dreams

  The Palos Verdes Project launches the great planned suburb: Olmsted Jr.'s land plan, Cheney's protective restrictions, the Art Jury, and sales brochures promising "the most fascinating and beautiful residential city in America." Malaga Cove Plaza, La Venta Inn, and the first villas rise through the decade.

• 1920s–1942

  The farming Hill — and its loss

  Alongside the new suburb, some 200 Japanese-American families farm the Peninsula's slopes, hauling produce to the LA markets and building a deep community around the Hill. Executive Order 9066 ends it overnight in 1942: the families are interned, most losing their leases, equipment, and livelihoods. Most families' leases were never restored; only a handful — among them the Hatano and Ishibashi families — return to farm the coastal terraces after the war. For decades afterward, Annie's Stand, the little white produce stand Annie and Jim Ishibashi ran beside their fields on Palos Verdes Drive South near Abalone Cove, sold tomatoes, strawberries, and sweet corn to generations of Hill families — a beloved landmark into the 2000s, and the last working piece of the farming Hill. Their story is part of the ground here.

• 1936

  Rolling Hills takes shape

  A. E. Hanson lays out the white-fenced ranch community along the crest for the Palos Verdes Corporation; the RHCA is born with it.

• 1939

  The first city

  Palos Verdes Estates incorporates to defend the Project's plan and parklands through the Depression.

• 1940s–50s

  The military Hill

  War brings radar and gun installations to the crest and, in the Cold War, Nike missile batteries — including site LA-55 at Point Vicente, whose grounds later became Rancho Palos Verdes' civic center. The radar domes on San Pedro Hill still watch the approaches to LAX.

• 1954

  Marineland of the Pacific

  The world's largest oceanarium opens on Long Point — killer whales, the "Sky Tower," Hollywood film shoots, and three decades of school field trips — until its new owner (SeaWorld's parent, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) abruptly closes it in 1987, moves the orcas to San Diego, and demolishes the park — leaving Long Point empty for two decades.

• 1956

  The land answers back

  County crews extending Crenshaw Boulevard reactivate the ancient Portuguese Bend landslide. About 130–140 homes are destroyed or displaced as the coast begins a slow-motion migration to the sea — and it is not the last reactivation: the Abalone Cove slide follows in 1974 and Klondike Canyon around 1980.

• 1957

  Two more cities

  Rolling Hills (January) and Rolling Hills Estates (September) incorporate within months of each other, locking the equestrian Hill's character into law amid LA's postwar annexation wave.

• 1961

  Schools unify — and a freighter misses

  Hill voters unify their school districts into what becomes PVPUSD, and Palos Verdes High opens on the bluff. Off Rocky Point, the Greek freighter Dominator runs aground in the fog; its rusting bones become the Hill's favorite macabre landmark for decades.

• 1973

  Save Our Coastline

  Facing county-approved plans for tens of thousands of new residents, coastal homeowners vote Rancho Palos Verdes into existence — the Hill's fourth and largest city, founded on open space.

• 1990s–2005

  The Preserve idea wins

  The Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (founded 1988) and the City of RPV assemble the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve — about 1,500 acres today, within roughly 1,700 the Conservancy manages Hill-wide — saving the coastal sage hills from the last great development push and bringing the PV blue butterfly back from presumed extinction.

• 2009

  Terranea rises on Long Point

  After twenty years of debate over Marineland's ghost, the 102-acre resort opens — the Hill's biggest business and its new postcard.

• 2023–24

  The wet years

  Record rains accelerate the Greater Portuguese Bend slide complex to historic rates; Wayfarers Chapel — Lloyd Wright's 1951 glass sanctuary, named a National Historic Landmark in 2023, mere months before the ground forced its closure — is painstakingly dismantled for rebuilding, with Battery Barnes near RPV City Hall the intended site (not yet secured). RPV's dewatering campaign begins to slow the land. The Hill's oldest story, still being written.

More lore lives on the city pages — the peafowl descended from a Vanderlip-era gift, the ghost stories of the lighthouse keepers, the Dominator's bones on the rocks. Know a tale we should keep? Send it in.