Rancho Palos Verdes
The city of the coast. About half of the Peninsula's oceanfront — the lighthouse, the coves, the preserve, the resort, and the restless land of Portuguese Bend — belongs to the Hill's youngest and largest city.
A city born to stop a city
Rancho Palos Verdes exists because its residents willed it into being. In the early 1970s, with Los Angeles County planning to approve dense development across the Hill's unincorporated coast, a grassroots "Save Our Coastline" movement gathered signatures, won the vote, and incorporated the city on September 7, 1973 — expressly to keep the coast open, the lots large, and the ridgelines unbuilt.
Fifty years on, that founding instinct still defines RPV: a roughly 1,500-acre nature preserve instead of subdivisions, a coastline of public trails and tide pools instead of private seawalls, and a city government whose hardest work is managing the one thing no council can legislate — the ground itself.
RPV is a city of neighborhoods rather than a city with a downtown. Its residents shop in Rolling Hills Estates or down the hill, and in exchange they get what no other city in Los Angeles County has: this coast.
Above Abalone Cove · Jim Helvey, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rancho Palos Verdes at a glance
| Incorporated | September 7, 1973 — the Peninsula's youngest city |
|---|---|
| Population | 42,287 (2020 Census) |
| Land area | ≈ 13.5 square miles, with roughly 7.5 miles of coastline |
| Government | General-law city, council–manager; five council members, rotating mayor |
| City hall | 30940 Hawthorne Blvd (the old Nike missile-era Civic Center site) · rpvca.gov |
| ZIP code | 90275 (Rancho Palos Verdes) |
| Schools | Palos Verdes Peninsula USD, except Eastview, which is inside LAUSD and may choose PVPUSD under state law |
| Police / fire | L.A. County Sheriff (Lomita Station) · L.A. County Fire |
The land, in brief
The Greater Portuguese Bend landslide complex underlies a section of southern RPV. After the record rains of 2023–24 accelerated movement to unprecedented rates, the city's emergency dewatering wells slowed it dramatically — below one inch per week on average as of the August 2026 survey. Since September 2025, new homes and additions are permanently barred on parcels inside the City's mapped landslide area, which takes in Portuguese Bend, western Seaview and part of the Beach Club (Ordinance 692) — details and current status at pvlandslide.com. Our explainer →
Landmark check
Point Vicente Lighthouse (1926) · Point Vicente Interpretive Center & whale-watch deck · Terranea Resort (on the old Marineland site) · Abalone Cove Shoreline Park · Del Cerro Park & the Preserve · Trump National Golf Club · Ladera Linda Community Center · the site of Wayfarers Chapel, closed and carefully dismantled in 2024 for eventual relocation.
RPV's neighborhoods, mapped
Neighborhood positions are approximate centers, not legal boundaries — many RPV neighborhoods are defined by tract, HOA, or simply habit. Corrections from residents are welcome: tell us.
Every Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood
One guide per neighborhood, with a guide for each recorded tract inside it: homes, build years, lots, streets, the recorded map, and schools by address from PVPUSD's locator.
- Beach View651 homes · built 1929–2021 · 5 tract guides
- Del Cerro160 homes · built mostly 1961–1985 · 2 tract guides
- Eastview2,340 homes · built mostly 1955–1974 · 15 tract guides
- Grandview1,524 homes · built mostly 1956–1963 · 13 tract guides
- Highridge1,496 homes · built mostly 1973–1979 · 11 tract guides
- Island View97 homes · built mostly 1985–1987
- La Rotonda154 homes · built 1974–2024 · 1 tract guide
- Ladera Linda266 homes · built mostly 1963–1988 · 3 tract guides
- Los Verdes777 homes · built mostly 1965–1986 · 4 tract guides
- Mediterrania326 homes · built mostly 1964–1970 · 2 tract guides
- Mesa Palos Verdes517 homes · built 1963–2021 · 2 tract guides
- Mira Catalina572 homes · built 1946–2023 · 9 tract guides
- Miraleste803 homes · built 1925–2021 · 13 tract guides
- Monaco391 homes · built mostly 1962–1979 · 1 tract guide
- Ocean Terrace138 homes · built mostly 1982–1999 · 1 tract guide
- Pacific View345 homes · built mostly 1967–1972
- Palos Verdes Drive East682 homes · built mostly 1953–1976 · 9 tract guides
- Point Vicente724 homes · built 1947–2024 · 11 tract guides
- Portuguese Bend152 homes · built 1920–2021 · 3 tract guides
- Portuguese Bend Beach Club95 homes · built mostly 1951–1963 · 1 tract guide
- Ridgecrest Ranchos141 homes · built mostly 1959–1974 · 3 tract guides
- Seacove138 homes · built mostly 1952–1977 · 2 tract guides
- SeaGate334 homes · built mostly 1973–1982 · 3 tract guides
- Seamount733 homes · built mostly 1965–1990 · 8 tract guides
- Seaview262 homes · built mostly 1956–1960
- Silver Arrow897 homes · built mostly 1959–1967 · 11 tract guides
- Vista Grande1,289 homes · built mostly 1962–1964 · 10 tract guides
The neighborhoods of Rancho Palos Verdes
West to east along the coast, then up and over the Hill. RPV has no official neighborhood registry; these are the names residents, HOAs, and real-estate listings actually use.
Oceanfront Estates & Lower Point Vicente
Bluff-top homes begun in 1999 and built out mostly in the 2000s, on the last big open bluff north of the lighthouse. Wide streets, Mediterranean estates, and a public bluff-top trail that loops the whole development — a condition RPV extracted from the developer, in classic RPV fashion. Steps from the Point Vicente Interpretive Center and the December-to-April gray-whale census.
Los Verdes & Monte Verde
Neighborhoods wrapped around Los Verdes Golf Course, the county course whose back nine hangs over the ocean: 1960s and early-1970s homes, with custom houses in Monte Verde, many with Catalina views over the fairways. Some of the best value-per-view math on the Peninsula.
Grandview & Vista Grande
Quiet cul-de-sac country on the Hill's northwest shoulder, bordering upper Palos Verdes Estates. Harbor-and-city lights views to the north and quick access down Hawthorne to the beach cities. By address, most of Vista Grande gets Vista Grande Elementary and Ridgecrest Intermediate, while Grandview, north of Hawthorne, gets Silver Spur or Montemalaga Elementary and PV Intermediate; high school is a choice of PVHS or Peninsula High.
Silver Arrow, Ridgecrest Ranchos & the Highridge corridor
RPV's most convenient address: minutes from Peninsula Center's shops and the library; by address, most homes here get Soleado Elementary and Ridgecrest Intermediate. A mix of 1950s–60s ranches, townhome communities, and the senior-living campuses along Crestridge. This is where the Hill runs its errands.
Del Cerro & Island View
At the top of Crenshaw Boulevard, where the road famously ends at the Preserve gate. Del Cerro's park is the Hill's favorite sunset overlook, gazing down the slide-sculpted amphitheater of Portuguese Bend to the sea. Trailhead parking debates are a perennial neighborhood sport.
Seaview
A grid of single-story homes along and above Palos Verdes Drive South with front-row seats to Catalina. The western part of Seaview sits within the Greater Portuguese Bend landslide complex — parts of the neighborhood saw utility disruptions in 2024, and since 2025 Ordinance 692 bars new homes and additions on the parcels inside the mapped boundary — and its residents have become some of the city's most engaged geology watchers (maps and current status: pvlandslide.com).
Portuguese Bend
The most beautiful and most complicated neighborhood on the Hill: dirt-road bohemian ranchettes, horse corrals, and mid-century homes scattered through the rolling land between Del Cerro and the sea. The ancient landslide beneath it reactivated in 1956 and has moved ever since (the full story: pvlandslide.com) — homes here ride on adjustable foundations, and the community's resilience is its own culture. The Portuguese Bend Riding Club and the annual horse show carry the old California feel.
Portuguese Bend Beach Club
A gated colony of beach homes on the Hill's only private sand beach. It grew from the late 1940s on land leased from Palos Verdes Properties, and in 1987 the owners bought their sites, the beach, the gatehouse and the roads. When a cottage trades, it trades quietly.
Ladera Linda & Forrestal
Mid-century neighborhoods tucked against the Forrestal Reserve's dramatic quarry cliffs. The city's striking new Ladera Linda Community Center & Park opened in 2023 and anchors the neighborhood; the Forrestal trailhead is the locals' back door into the Preserve.
San Ramon & the Switchbacks
Ocean-view streets climbing from Palos Verdes Drive South near the city's eastern coast, beside the famous switchback climb of PV Drive East. Below sit the public trails of Ocean Trails Reserve and Trump National — whose original 18th hole slid into the sea in 1999, a very Peninsula origin story.
Mira Catalina
High on the Hill's eastern shoulder with straight-shot views of the harbor, the bridge, and (of course) Catalina. Served by its namesake elementary school and Miraleste Intermediate; a favorite of families who want east-side sun and a faster run to the freeway.
Miraleste
One of the four original 1920s Palos Verdes Project villages, and it shows: Italian-revival homes on pepper-tree lanes, its own little plaza with a fountain, and the landmark Miraleste Intermediate campus. Miraleste even keeps its own recreation and park district (the Miraleste Recreation and Park District, formed in 1940) and a distinct old-Peninsula identity — 90275 address, 1920s soul.
Eastview & Rolling Hills Riviera
Annexed from unincorporated county land in 1983, the Eastview area along Western Avenue is RPV's most walkable, most affordable quarter — and its most unusual school situation: by state law, Eastview families may choose Palos Verdes Peninsula USD or LAUSD. Rolling Hills Riviera, around Avenida Aprenda and Montereina Drive, climbs the slope west of Western Avenue: a mid-century neighborhood that lies wholly in RPV.
How RPV became RPV
- 1869
The whalers give the Bend its name
Portuguese whalemen from the Azores build a shore whaling station at the cove that will forever carry their name. Captain Frank Anderson's crews render 2,166 barrels of oil from migrating gray whales between 1874 and 1877 before the station is abandoned — its site is California Historical Landmark No. 381. During Prohibition, the same secluded coves serve the rum-runners.
- 1926
The light goes on
Point Vicente Lighthouse begins sweeping the channel; its keepers' ghost stories begin almost immediately.
- 1940s–50s
The coast goes to war
World War II brings coastal defense to Point Vicente — Battery Barnes's gun emplacements and magazine tunnels dug into the cliffs above the lighthouse. In the Cold War, Nike missile site LA-55 occupies the upper point; its grounds later become RPV's Civic Center, which is why City Hall sits on some of the best view land in California.
- 1948
The Portuguese Bend Club
The Palos Verdes Corporation finishes a private beach club at Portuguese Bend, with a saltwater pool, tennis courts and a 425-foot pier; members' homes go up on leased land beside it. The 1956 slide closes the clubhouse, demolished by 1958, and the pier comes out in 1973. The gated colony endures.
- 1954
Marineland of the Pacific opens
The world's largest oceanarium rises on the Long Point headland, putting the future RPV coast on postcards worldwide until its abrupt 1987 closure.
- 1956
Portuguese Bend begins to move
County road crews extending Crenshaw Boulevard destabilize an ancient slide; about 130–140 homes are destroyed or displaced over the following years and the land has crept ever since.
- 1966
The Admiral drops anchor
The Admiral Risty opens at Golden Cove — sunset dinners, stiff drinks, and the Hill's favorite window seat for 52 years, until the landmark poured its last in 2019.
- 1973
Incorporation
The Save Our Coastline movement wins cityhood on an open-space platform, creating California's then-newest city with 35,000 residents.
- 1977
The Falcon and the Snowman
Two Peninsula-raised childhood friends — Christopher Boyce, a falconer who worked inside TRW's secure "black vault" in Redondo Beach, and Andrew Daulton Lee — are caught selling satellite secrets to the Soviets. The espionage case stuns the Hill and becomes a bestselling book and the 1985 film.
- 1984
The Hill gets its museum
The Point Vicente Interpretive Center opens on the bluff beside the lighthouse — geology, Marineland memories, and the volunteer gray-whale census that gives rise to Whale of a Day, the spring festival Hill families have grown up with since.
- 2009
Terranea opens
After two decades of debate over the Marineland site, the 102-acre Terranea Resort opens — now the city's largest employer and tax source.
- 2024
The land tests the city
After two historically wet winters, land movement accelerates to feet-per-month in places; utilities are cut to parts of Portuguese Bend and Seaview, Wayfarers Chapel is dismantled for safekeeping (with a rebuild planned at Battery Barnes near City Hall, a site not yet secured), and an emergency dewatering campaign begins — slowing the slide dramatically within a year. The running record: pvlandslide.com.
On the market in RPV
A sample of current RPV activity — the Real Estate page has more Rancho Palos Verdes listings from our curated sample, plus the Hill-wide map, medians, and market notes. Every property links to its Properkey page where one exists. Data powered by Properkey.
The Rancho Palos Verdes market
RPV pricing is a map of microclimates: view corridor, lot, school boundary, and — uniquely here — geology. The same square footage can trade at twice the price two streets away, and land-movement zones change the lending picture entirely.
Trump National's ocean cliffs · Wikimedia Commons (public domain) · Real estate content by Properkey, CA DRE #01979718 · Equal Housing Opportunity
RPV quick links
City & alerts
- City of RPVAgendas, permits, services
- City Council agendas & video1st & 3rd Tuesdays, 7 pm
- City land-movement portalOfficial updates & data
- pvlandslide.comIndependent slide tracking
Parks & recreation
- PV Land ConservancyPreserve trails & volunteering
- Point Vicente Interpretive CenterWhale watching Dec–Apr
- Ladera Linda Community CenterOpened 2023
Schools serving RPV
- Schools & boundariesPVPUSD guide with boundary map
- ElementaryMira Catalina, Vista Grande, Point Vicente, Soleado, Montemalaga, Silver Spur, Dapplegray (east side and Eastview), a few Rancho Vista streets · Cornerstone by lottery
- SecondaryRidgecrest, Miraleste or PV Intermediate, by address → PVHS or Peninsula High (your choice)