Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971 (1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1949, 1885, 1870s, 1860s, 1848.
" . . . the importance of Santa Monica Canyon is that it is the point where Los Angeles first came to the Beaches. From the garden of Charles [and Ray] Eames's house in Pacific Palisades, one can look down on a collection of roofs and roads that cover the old camp-site to which Angelenos started to come for long weekend picnics under canvas from the beginning of the 1870s. The journey from downtown could take two days, so it was not an excursion to be lightly undertaken, but there was soon enough traffic to justify a regular stage-run, and a semi-permanent big tent that served as a dance-hall and could sleep thirty people overnight." p. 44, 45.
". . . Within a few years of the discovery of the canyon mouth as a picnic beach, the railway had hit the shore at Santa Monica, but on the southern side of the flat-topped mesa on which most of the present Santa Monica stands. Along the top of the bluff where the mesa meets the sea is the splendid cliff-top park of Santa Monica Palisades, and behind it there have always been high-class hotels as long as there has been a Santa Monica." pp. 45 and 46.
[pp. 44 and 45 have photos of c. 1870 SM Canyon and the View from the Eames House.]