Venice, California: Tongva Marshland to Abbot Kinney's Dream

The wetlands you're near were Tongva homeland for thousands of years, a tidal marsh the Gabrielino people hunted and fished without interruption until Spanish missions arrived in the seventeen eighties and dismantled that way of life within a generation.

After Mexican independence, the land became Rancho La Ballona, granted in eighteen thirty-nine to two pairs of brothers, the Machados and the Talamantes, who had already been grazing cattle here for twenty years. Their rancho covered much of today's Westside.

In nineteen oh five, tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney dredged those same marshes into sixteen miles of canals, built Venetian-style colonnades, and opened Venice of America as a beach resort on July Fourth. It had a long pier, a hot-salt-water plunge, and gondoliers imported from Italy. Venice was absorbed into Los Angeles in nineteen twenty-six. The novelty faded, and most canals were paved over to make room for cars. The six surviving canal blocks were declared a historic district in nineteen eighty-two.