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.jpg) ad nature (human nature, that is) taken its course, Santa Catalina Island might have looked a lot like Coney Island. Think of it: 76 square miles of prime, Southern California oceanfront real estate. By all reason, there should be a daily armada of ferry boats to and from every port in Southern California, a six-lane highway from Avalon to Two Harbors, strip malls, fast food chains, gas stations, not to mention tightly packed condos, parking structures and a shoreline adorned with Coke cans, cigarette butts and Doritos bags.
Instead, we have paradise: tidepools and fragile kelp beds awash with life, wild buffalo, fearless Catalina quail and thousands of acres of wilderness with nary a footpath.
How did this miracle occur?
Separated from the mainland by the 22-mile-wide San Pedro Channel, Catalina was originally a land grant in Spanish California. Mexican governor of Alta California Pio Pico sold it to American owners in 1846. The island changed hands several times in the 19th century before being purchased by the Banning brothers, who operated a fleet of steamers from the mainland. Avalon was already a vacation destination when a mysterious fire in 1915 blighted the island tourist trade. Discouraged, the Bannings sold the island in 1919 to Chicago chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. and two associates.
Wrigley had made his fortune spinning off the family’s soap man
The Wrigleys at the Crescent Avenue Beach in Avalon, circa 1930. |
ufacturing business into a chewing gum empire. By 1914, he was a rich man, free to pursue his pleasures. At age 54, he purchased a Mediterranean mansion (now headquarters of the Tournament of Roses Association) on Pasadena’s “Millionaire’s Row,” where he and his wife Ada spent winters away from the Windy City. Soon after, he acquired the Chicago Cubs franchise. He bought the team because he had fallen in love with baseball. He bought Catalina Island for the same reason.
From the moment a real estate agent showed Wrigley color postcards of Catalina, the Chicagoan was entranced: that same day in 1919, he purchased Catalina for $2 million. When the Wrigleys came to look at their island some three weeks later, it was love at first sight. Her first morning there, Ada Wrigley gazed out at the stunning Descanso Canyon view and ex-claimed: “I should like to live here!”
ACCORDING TO one account, Wrigley decided then and there that the island would never pass out of his hands. While his partners viewed Catalina as merely a real estate venture, Wrigley’s feelings went much deeper. More than one biographer has quoted his doctrine: “There is to be nothing of the Coney Island flavor about Santa Catalina. It would be unthinkable to mar the beauty of such a spot with roller coasters and the like.” Wrigley promptly bought out his speculator partners.
It’s not that he was opposed to development: he invested heavily in improvements, new construction and repairs. But the developments were done thoughtfully and without any expectation of a financial return. For visitors – who had swelled to a yearly 750,000 by 1930 – Wrigley built the swank Hotel Atwater, the Bird Park (which in its heyday displayed 8,000 birds from around the world) and a spectacular casino whose domed ballroom booked such swing-era greats as Benny Goodman.
For the locals, Wrigley built new schools, created jobs by opening mining operations, and spent $1 million of his own money to develop a water-supply system. And for his family, Wrigley built Mount Ada – a home rising 350 feet above Avalon Canyon, overlooking the training camp where the Chicago Cubs took spring practice from 1921 to 1951 (Wrigley liked to spy on his team through a telescope).
Now a posh bed and breakfast, the hilltop retreat in Wrigley’s day received such illustrious guests as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and the Prince of Wales.
When William Wrigley Jr. died in 1932, his body was buried on Catalina in a memorial park erected by his family.
WITH WRIGLEY'S DEATH his son Philip Knight Wrigley inherited more than the family’s financial empire: he also inherited a devotion to Catalina. The young “P.K.” had joined his parents on that first memorable trip in 1919 to the island; in the ’20s, he and his wife Helen built a hillside retreat across the canyon from Mount Ada. It was P.K. Wrigley who constructed the island’s first airport.
Like his father, P.K. felt a passionate commitment to preserving the island’s pristine beauty. He was the impetus behind the creation of the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, a nonprofit membership group founded in 1972 to protect Catalina’s ecological heritage. In 1975, the Santa Catalina Island Co. – the Wrigley-owned entity that held title to the island – deeded 86 percent of Catalina’s 42,139 acres to the conservancy.
“That means that what’s wild in Catalina will remain wild,” noted a recent Sacramento Bee article. “Avalon, the main settlement, has little room for expansion.... Huge shopping malls and traffic jams won’t happen.” Today, the Island Company owns just 13 percent of Catalina, mostly in and around the town of Avalon. The remaining 1 percent is divided among several owners, including USC.
William Wrigley’s Avalon residence, Mount Ada, in 1922. |
USC’S INVOLVEMENT with the Wrigleys traces back to a fortuitous meeting in 1962 between Norman Topping and P.K. Wrigley. As the late USC president recounted in his 1990 memoir, Recollections, Topping and his wife Helen were invited by mutual friend William Pereira – architect of the masterplan for University Park’s development – to dine with the Wrigleys in Chicago. Wrigley had commissioned the noted L.A. planner to prepare a study of Catalina Island and make recommendations for its future development. As luck would have it, Pereira’s plan for the island – which he presented that night – included a proposed marine science center. Topping chimed in at the opportune moment with an offer to help identify a site for such an installation. The resulting study pinpointed Big Fisherman’s Cove, where Wrigley subsequently asked USC to build a marine center. P.K. deeded five and a half acres around the cove to the university, and a few years later added another seven acres for dormitories and a cafeteria, plus a $25,000 yearly stipend.
In time, Topping had hoped to persuade the philanthropist to transfer even more land, but P.K. hit on a better idea: he started signing over Island Company stock. In 1975, USC got 2,300 shares from P.K. and another 980 shares from his sister, Dorothy Wrigley Offield – then valued at around $5.5 million. More stock filtered in over the next couple of years.
Since USC had become a major shareholder in the Island Company, Norman Topping was invited to join the company’s board of directors in 1978 (a position now held by USC President Steven B. Sample). P.K.’s only son, William Wrigley, in turn, became a USC trustee, a position which he held until his death last spring.
THE THIRD IN a line of Catalina patrons, William Wrigley demonstrated his loyalty to the island almost from day one of his stewardship. Forced to sell off family assets to settle the huge estate taxes after both his parents died in 1977, Wrigley chose his beloved Catalina over his also beloved Chicago Cubs. Reluctantly, Wrigley sold an 80 percent stake in the ball club for $20.5 million.
Over the years, William Wrigley continued to carry on his family’s conservationist legacy and its support of USC projects on Catalina. In 1995, he and his wife Julie, with a gift of $5 million, kicked off a $60 million project to establish the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, helping the research center at Big Fisherman’s Cove expand its focus beyond marine biology to a broad range of environ-mental issues. The College of Letters, Arts and Sciences committed a minimum of $30 million in support of the effort and, at the urging of LAS dean Morton Owen Schapiro, the couple gave an additional $5 million in 1997. Before the 66-year-old Wrigley died suddenly in March – leaving his son William Wrigley Jr. in control of the family interests – he donated another $5 million to the USC Wrigley Institute.
Four generations of Wrigleys have contributed more than $32 million to USC either directly or through foundations. Their passion for the natural wonder of Catalina has provided both a paradisical wilderness sanctuary and a near-perfect laboratory for environmental studies.
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