The natural harbor on the eastern end of Catalina makes it a logical choice as the island’s main port and settlement area.
Augustus Timms found it a good place from which to operate his goat farm in the 1860s, and the sparsely settled location became known as Timms Landing. Timms got around. He later moved to San Pedro and the coastal land he owned there also became known as Timms Landing.
Catalina Island passed through many hands before developer George Shatto and his partner, A.C. Sumner, bought it for $200,000 in 1887, with plans to develop it as a resort and fishing mecca.
Shatto’s sister-in-law, Etta Whitney, suggested the the new city the developers were building at the harbor be renamed “Avalon” after the mythical paradise described by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his epic poem, “Idylls of the King.”
Shatto, who built the island’s first hotel, The Metropole, liked the idea and the Avalon name stuck. He couldn’t make a long-term go of it, however, and sold it to the prosperous Banning family in January 1892.
Wilmington shipping magnate Phineas Banning had expressed an interest in buying the island a decade earlier. He died in 1885, but the company he built, now run by his three sons — Joseph, William and Hancock — saw the business possibilities the island offered, and made the deal to purchase it from Shatto for $128,740.
The Bannings immediately began making major improvements to Avalon. They attempted to transform it into a high-class tourist destination, and under their stewardship, the island became a fashionable vacation spot for the well-to-do.
Their plans included taking complete control of access to the island. Visitors were not charged an entry fee, but could only be transported there on ships owned and operated by the family’s Wilmington Transportation Company.
This attempt to monopolize transportation led to ongoing skirmishes between the Bannings and the operators of what the family called “tramp steamers,” independently owned boats that also brought visitors to the island on the pretext that the harbor was open to all comers.
Catalina’s growing popularity led to an influx of people, one way or another, during tourist season. More people brought other problems to Avalon, including illegal gambling and rowdy alchohol-fueled behavior at local saloons.
The Bannings tried to control that at first, too, making sure that the Hotel Metropole was issued the city’s only liquor license. But eventually, other establishments serving liquor began opening, including the posh Pilgrim Club in 1902. Occasional gambling raids even began to occur, sullying the family’s attempts to maintain a family image for the town.
It was, indeed, just a town during this era, unincorporated and under the legal control of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. And the battle to keep the transportation monopoly had grown more intense, with barbed wire fences and physical confrontations on area beaches becoming more frequent.
The Bannings expressed their outrage at the intruding boats by regularly threatening to vacate Avalon and re-establish themselves at the Two Harbors settlement near the western end of the island, but this never came to pass. A series of adverse legal decisions in the early 1900s finally broke their grip on transportation to the island.
The establishment of the Avalon Freeholders Improvement Association in 1909 also led to a movement to break the Bannings’ grip on the island. The group, made up of those who’d purchased lots under Shatto’s ownership, worked with the family, with some success, to bring more improvements and amenities to the Avalon area, including better streets, and water, gas and other utilities.
But it wasn’t enough.
The move toward incorporating Avalon as an independent city arose in large part from new powers voters gave the county to control liquor sales in its unincorporated areas, which included Catalina. Saloon owners teamed with residents who opposed the restrictions to begin a concerted effort to press for Avalon’s incorporation, which potentially could break both the county’s and the Banning family’s hold on their operations.
When the June 1913 election results came in, pro-incorporation voters had succeeded in creating a new city by a yes vote of 132-88. By early 1915, the Bannings had made their peace with Avalon’s new governance and were working with the Freeholders Association on improvements to the city’s facilities and infrastructure.
Sadly, much of that work was damaged by a devastating fire that began on the morning of Nov. 29, 1915. It destroyed a good portion of the city and dealt a $2 million blow to the Bannings family’s investment. No official cause for the fire was ever found.
The Bannings and the new city undertook a fervent rebuilding program, but family squabbles made an offer from chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley Jr. easier to accept. Only Hancock Banning opposed the $3 million sale, and his brothers outvoted him. The deal was announced in February 1919.
Building on the foundation laid by the Bannings, the Wrigley family further transformed the island into the tourist mecca that had been envisioned more than 30 years earlier by George Shatto. Movie stars and the Chicago Cubs spring training years followed.
Restrictions on island transportation and individual property ownership in Avalon were eased. Crucially, though, the island’s natural beauty came under more protection through the actions of the Catalina Island Conservancy, to which the Wrigley family deeded most of the island’s land in 1975.
Sources: “Avalon’s History,” Islapedia website. The Catalina Story, by Alma Overholt, Catalina Island Museum Society, 1962. Grand Ventures: The Banning Family and the Shaping of Southern California, by Tom Sitton, Huntington Library, 2010. Los Angeles Times archives. San Pedro News Pilot archives.
