Our Santa Monica logo carries the California Republic bear and star above '1850,' the year of statehood — the shared retro emblem of every Merlin Classics California place. Drawn in a worn black-and-white that recalls a WPA poster or old pier signage, the bear-and-star is California in shorthand: tough, independent, sun-bleached. The bear is the through-line that links Santa Monica to every other California place we make. What makes this one Santa Monica is everything around it — the pier and the wheel, the Route 66 sign, the palm bluffs, and the long beach on the bay.
The twentieth century layered on more. The 1920s brought a 'Gold Coast' of beach-resort hotels and the first Hollywood money to the sand; in 1921 Donald Douglas founded Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, and in 1924 the U.S. Army's first-ever round-the-world flight set out from the city's Clover Field — an aviation chapter that ran here until the 1970s. Muscle Beach built a national fitness culture on the south-end sand in the 1930s and '40s; the Third Street Promenade reinvented downtown for walking in 1989; and the pier's solar Ferris wheel arrived in 1996. Through all of it the bluffs of Palisades Park kept their Moreton Bay figs and their Camera Obscura, looking out over the same bright water.
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 beach, and a walkable downtown, all on a bright Pacific bay. People come for the pier and the End of the Trail, for sunsets off the bluffs of Palisades Park, and for an easy California beach day with a long history behind it. It is iconic, friendly, and unmistakably Southern California.
