History of Santa Monica, California - 1880s

1880s

Business started springing up. The town's new business district was initially centered around the current Third Street Promenade. Early street names consisted of both numbers and the names of western states; however Utah eventually became Broadway and Oregon became Santa Monica Boulevard.

By 1885, the town's first hotel, the Santa Monica Hotel, was constructed on Ocean Ave., between Colorado and Utah in 1885. The Hotel burned in 1887. The 125-room "Arcadia Hotel" opened on January 25, 1887. Named for Arcadia Bandini, it was one of the great hotels on the Pacific Coast of its era. The hotel was the site where Colonel Griffith J. Griffith shot his wife in 1903, which led to their divorce and his (short) imprisonment.

The residents voted to incorporate November 30, 1886, and chose the first board of trustees.

Senator Jones built a mansion, Miramar, and his wife Georgina planted a Moreton Bay Fig tree in its front yard in 1889. (The tree is now in the courtyard of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and is the second-largest such tree in California, the largest being the tree in Santa Barbara.)

• Santa Monica in the 1880s

• A busy day on the beach, 1880.

• Businesses on Third Street, between Utah and Oregon.

• Santa Monica Hotel, 1885.

• Santa Monica, 1887.

• The Arcadia Hotel, oceanside.

• The Arcadia Hotel, street-side.

• Looking south across the bluffs, the Arcadia Hotel sits at the end of the pier, 1888.

• Senator Jones' Miramar mansion