Costco to Host Book Signing for Local Rancho Palos Verdes Author

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. - Dec. 4, 2013 - PRLog -- Long before Rancho Palos Verdes became the newest city on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, it was part of Rancho de los Palos Verdes, a seemingly worthless patch of oceanfront hill covered in brush fit only for shore whalers, smugglers and cattle. Through forfeiture and foreclosure, the Bixby family from Maine acquired the peninsula and made the land profitable by diversifying – ranching, sharecropping with American field farmers and renting land to Japanese flower and vegetable growers.

New York financier Frank Vanderlip realized in 1912 the development potential of the hill's dramatic vistas and rugged cliffs and canyons. Over the years, three cities were created as tree-covered havens for horses and wildlife – islands of calm. But by 1960, danger to this lifestyle lay in overdevelopment from the Los Angeles County -owned land encircling them. This, then, is the story of the land which became the fourth city.

Rancho Palos Verdes was created in 1973 from county land and was  dedicated to keeping the peninsula green and underdeveloped, as Vanderlip envisioned

Join the author for a signing:

Where:  Costco

2751 Skypark Drive, Torrance CA 90505

When:  Saturday, December 7^th, 2013; 11:00 a.m.—2:00 p.m.

Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665.

Arcadia Publishing is the leading publisher of local and regional history in the United States.  Our mission is to make history accessible and meaningful through the publication of books on the heritage of America’s people and places.  Have we done a book on your town?

###

Ginger Garnett Clark lives in Rancho Palos Verdes. Photographs in this book are from the Palos Verdes Library Local History Room, the Point Vicente Interpretive Center and the private collections of the many generous people who live in Palos Verdes.

Rancho Palos Verdes

by Ginger Garnett Clark

Images of America series

128 pages/ softcover

Available: November 16, 2009