Santa Catalina Island is one of the West Coast's great nearby escapes, an hour's boat ride from Los Angeles and Long Beach for one million annual tourists. The island's seventy-six square miles contain two communities--Avalon and Two Harbors--and extremely rugged seashores and interior wild lands. Here, the history has been carved by pirates, smugglers, prospectors and squatters and set down by seafaring scribes and Hollywood fabricators. The facts have been massaged by the ebb and flow of time and scattered like sun-baked rocks from a beachcomber's kick. Co-authors Patricia Maxwell, Bob Rhein and Jerry Roberts have collected Catalina's basic facts and lore into a quick reference that's as easily accessible as the most charming of California's Channel Islands.
Patricia J. Maxwell is the director of marketing and communications for the Catalina Island Conservancy. She has been producer of the Isla Earth Radio Series for the Conservancy since 2008. She formerly was director of media relations for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Bob Rhein formerly was the media relations news writer for the Catalina Island Conservancy. He formerly wrote for the Fullerton Daily News Tribune and high-tech trade newspapers as well as the communications and marketing department at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Jerry Roberts is the senior editor and writer for the Catalina Island Conservancy and a commissioning editor for The History Press. Formerly an acquisitions editor for Arcadia Publishing and film critic of the former Copley Los Angeles Newspapers, he is the author or editor of eighteen books, including "The Hollywood Scandal Almanac, " "The Complete History of American Film Criticism, " "Mitchum: In His Own Words, " "The Great American Playwrights on the Screen" and the young adult biography "Roberto Clemente."