Fred E. Basten Santa Monica Bay: The First 100 Years, A pictorial history of Santa Monica, Venice, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu, Douglas-West Publishers: Los Angeles, CA, 1974, 227 pp., 1878, 1876, 1875, 1874, 1872.
" . . . On the mesa itself, site of the unborn town of Santa Monica, a trail crossed the grass-covered prairie to the foot of what is now Colorado Avenue. Colonel R. S. Baker, a cattleman who had come to San Francisco from Rhode Island, made a trip to the area in 1872. He looked over the flat expanse and, deciding it would make a good sheep ranch, went to the Sepulveda heirs and paid them $55,000 for their rancho. Later, he bought part of the Reyes-Marquez property adjoining on the northwest, plus a portion of Rancho La Ballona adjoining San Vicente on the southeast.
"Senator John Percival Jones of Nevada, a Comstock millionaire, appeared on the scene in 1874 and bought three-fourths interest in Colonel Baker's ranch for $162,500. Together they planned a railroad, a wharf and a town.
"On July 10, 1875, a map of 'Santa Monica' was recorded in the office of the County Recorder in Los Angeles. The town site fronted on the ocean and was bounded on the northwest by Montana Avenue, on the southeast by Railroad Avenue (now Colorado) and on the northeast by 26th Street . . .
"Within nine months, Santa Monica had 1,000 people, 160 houses and half as many tents. Tracks for the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad, sponsored by Senator Jones, had been laid from the ocean to Los Angeles and a wharf was in operation. That same year saw a school district organized, a church established, the beginnings of a public library, a bathhouse, a hotel and a newspaper." p. 5
[Santa Monica's first wharf, "Shoo Fly Pier, was completed in April, 1875 at the foot of Colorado Avenue. Steamers arrived from San Francisco with passengers for the first land sale. It was a loading point of tar from the La Brea pits and was condemned in 1878 by the Southern Pacific Railroad.]
[On page 9 is a reproduction of an illustration of Santa Monica in 1876, identifying 6th Street as a carriage throughway from the south to the north over Railroad Avenue Bridge with Ocean Park buildings indicated.]