The origin and spelling of the place name is somewhat disputed. A 1918 article in the
San Pedro News-Pilot firmly stated "White Point is not 'White's Point' and...it is named not for an individual but by reason of its own complexion". ; White Point is the headland just to the left (west) of
Point Fermin (
Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1923) In the last years of the 19th century, White Point was developed as an
abalone fishery off
Rancho de Los Palos Verdes; the fishermen were mostly immigrants from Japan. The land was legally owned by
Ramon Sepulveda, who allocated an area for housing the fishermen. The abalone were dried for shipment and sale; the shells were sold for $4 a ton. The abalone fishery was shut down in 1905, in part due to declining take but mostly due to the work of anti-Japanese activists in California. Racist California state laws prevented Japanese land ownership but the sulphur springs apparently earned the White Point resort a partial "
sanatorium" exception. White Point resort was sometimes marketed as Radium Springs, which was part of a widespread early-20th-century
radium fad (now known to be a form of
radioactive quackery). A 1923
Los Angeles Times profile of the resort described Sunday morning as church (at either Buddhist or Christian services) and Sunday evening as a party night: "Somewhere about our wicked city they have learned to undulate to jazz music and an American orchestra from San Pedro is always on hand Sunday evenings to play for
one steps and
fox trots!" There was a restaurant, with American and
American Chinese food served on the ground floor, and Japanese food served on the second ("The upper room caters strictly to Japanese.") The Royal Palms Hotel was built in 1915 and destroyed in the early 1930s by a combination of sea storms and the earthquake. but the golf course closed in 1933, while the clubhouse survived until a 1955 fire. The state of California bought the beach in 1960 and in 1995 deeded it to Los Angeles County. == See also ==