Santa Monica as a town dates to 1875, when a Nevada silver senator, John P. Jones, and a ranching colonel, Robert Baker, laid it out as a seaside resort — a "Pearl of the Pacific" they hoped would become Los Angeles's great port. Jones built his railroad and his mile-long wharf, and for a time the port dream was real: Santa Monica served as the region's port of call into the early 1900s, until San Pedro took the harbor trade for good. The city incorporated in 1886 and kept the better inheritance — the beach.
The sand wrote its own history. Just south of the pier in the 1930s, the original Muscle Beach opened — gymnasts, acrobats, and weightlifters working out in the open air, launching the physical-culture boom that reshaped American fitness before the scene migrated down the coast. And the beach itself — wide, state-run, and seemingly endless — became simply California's beach: the one the postcards, the songs, and the closing shots of a thousand films actually mean.
Why People Visit Santa Monica
Santa Monica rewards visitors with a rare mix — a historic amusement pier, the western end of Route 66, miles of state beach, and one of America's great walking downtowns, all on a bright Pacific bay. People come for the pier and the End of the Trail, and stay for the sunsets off the bluffs and the easy, salt-aired grace of California's beach city.
