The City of Rancho Palos Verdes was incorporated in 1973, the last of the 4 cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula to incorporate. The major driving force for incorporation at the time was zoning and density which, when it was just part of LA County, gave the residents little say. When 20 story condos a la Santa Monica were proposed along PV Drive South, that was the last straw. The Palos Verdes Bay Club, built in 1964 and while only 3 stories high, was the first (and last) of these.

The new City basically encompassed nearly all the land on the Peninsula not previously part of one of the other 3 cities. Remaining outside any of the 4 cities was still Westfield and the area on the south side of Via Campesina from PV Drive North down to the PVE City limits just after that big dip. That area is now part of RPV, but that was only about 10 years ago.

Rancho Palos Verdes is a very diverse city dwelling-wise, with properties ranging from condos in the $350,000 range to homes approaching $20 million. The upscale developments of Island View and Ocean Terrace were built on the old

McCarrell Ranch. The McCarrell’s were ranchers since the turn of the 20th Century who grew all sorts of stuff, tho they were noted for their garbanzo beans, which all the local Italian restaurants bought. We used to go to Luigi’s at 9th and Gaffey in San Pedro every Sunday night and eat them, tho we didn’t know it at the time. They sold the ranch about the time RPV incorporated. The family is still in the area, with Mrs McCarrell living in Redondo Beach and their daughter Jeanette, one of my clients, in Rolling Hills Estates. McCarrell Canyon is named after the family.

The flat area just north of that, up Highridge Road, was part of Don Wallace’s “antenna farm”, after whom the housing development Wallace Ranch is named. When I was in high school in the early ’60’s there was a bunch of big telephone poles running almost from Crest Road over to what became Armaga Springs Road. I had no idea what they were at the time, but found out later that, during WW 2, the Navy Department had owned that land and the poles housed long wave antennas which the Navy used to communicate with the

***I took this picture of Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, which the Marines were trying to keep the Japanese from developing into an airstrip. This was the original cause of the Battle of Guadalcanal.***

South Pacific, relaying thru Pearl Harbor (the Japanese didn’t bomb the radio equipment). During the invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942, that was how Adm Stark and the boys in Washington communicated with the 1st Marine Division, when the issue was very much in doubt. So Palos Verdes had an important connection with that very crucial time in US history.