Indigenous used ''
te'aats'' to navigate the coastline. Archeological sites in the
Los Angeles Basin date back about 10,000 years old. The peninsula, including all of San Pedro, was the homeland of the
Tongva people and home to the villages of
Chowigna and nearby
Suangna. The Tongva used seafaring plank canoes or ''
te'aats'', found all throughout the coastline, to travel to and from the
Channel Islands and along the coastline. The boats are still constructed by the Tongva today and retain a cultural significance. First contact with Europeans occurred in 1542 with
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the Spanish explorer who noted the extensive presence of the plank boats of the neighboring
Chumash.
Origin of name , a
Californio politician, signer of the
California Constitution and owner of
Rancho San Pedro helped found the settlement at San Pedro, then a small fishing village. San Pedro was named for
St. Peter of Alexandria, as his feast day is November 24 on the
ecclesiastical calendar of Spain, the day on which
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo first encountered the San Pedro Bay in 1542.
Santa Catalina Island, named after
Catherine of Alexandria, was claimed for the
Spanish Empire the next day, on her feast day, November 25. In 1602–1603,
Sebastián Vizcaíno (1548–1624) officially surveyed and mapped the California coastline, including San Pedro Bay, for
New Spain. The anglicized pronunciation is "san-PEE-dro".
Settlement , pioneer of San Pedro and a founder of the
San Pedro Woman's Club European settlement began in 1769 as part of an effort to populate California, although trade restrictions encouraged more smuggling than regular business. In 1784, the
Spanish Crown deeded
Rancho San Pedro, a tract of over , to retired soldier Juan José Domínguez, who helped explore California with the
Portolá expedition in 1769–1770. Rancho San Pedro was the first
land grant in the
Alta California portion of the province of
Las Californias in
New Spain. When New Spain won its independence from the
Spanish Empire and Alta California became part of Mexico, the trade restrictions were lifted, and the town flourished. Under United States control after 1848, when the United States defeated Mexico in the
Mexican–American War, the harbor was greatly improved and expanded under the guidance of
Phineas Banning and
John Gately Downey, the seventh governor of California after the
Free Harbor Fight. In 1868 Banning created the
Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, Southern California's first railroad and used it to transport goods from
San Pedro Bay to
Los Angeles, which soon became a major city in Southern California.
Township San Pedro was a township in the 1860 census. The township consisted of the present-day
South Bay communities,
Compton and western
Long Beach. Census records report a population of 359 in 1860. The township was renamed Wilmington Township for 1870.
City In 1906, the city of Los Angeles annexed the
Harbor Gateway, a long, narrow strip of land connecting the city to the northern border of
Wilmington, and in 1909, the larger city consolidated with Wilmington and with San Pedro. In 1929, the city experienced the
Sunken City Disaster, where an earthquake caused multiple homes to slide off a cliff into the sea.
United States Navy Battle Fleet home port 1919–1940 , port of call at San Pedro, 1934 In 1888, the
War Department took control of a tract of land next to the bay and added to it in 1897 and 1910. This became
Fort MacArthur in 1914 and was a coastal defense site for many years.
Woodrow Wilson transferred 200 United States Navy ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1919 when tension arose between the United States and Japan over the fate of China.
San Diego Bay was considered too shallow for the largest ships, so the
battleships anchored in San Pedro Bay on August 9, 1919. Local availability of fuel oil minimized transportation costs, and consistently good weather allowed frequent gunnery exercises off the nearby
Channel Islands of California. The heavy
cruisers of the
Scouting Force were transferred from the Atlantic to San Pedro in response to the 1931
Japanese invasion of Manchuria. By 1934, 14 battleships, two
aircraft carriers, 14 cruisers, and 16 support ships were based at San Pedro. On April 1, 1940, the
Pacific Fleet battleships sailed to Hawaii for annual fleet exercises. The battleships remained in the
Hawaiian Islands to deter Japanese aggression until the
attack on Pearl Harbor. The
fleet post office, supply depot, fuel depot,
degaussing range,
ECM repair facility, and naval training schools for small craft, fire fighters, merchant ship communications, and anti-submarine attack remained at San Pedro through World War II; but the battle fleet never returned. San Pedro was selected as the final home port of the battleship . The
Iowa now serves as a museum ship and memorial recognizing "the positive contributions of this battleship and its crew at critical moments in American history". Additionally, the
United States Maritime Commission commissioned private San Pedro and Long Beach shipbuilders such as the
Calship to build
attack transports, Liberty ships, and Victory ships during World War II under the
Emergency Shipbuilding Program, including the
SS Lane Victory, now a designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark museum ship in San Pedro. ==Geography and climate==