Jenny Pirie, Peter Kastner and Jeff Mudrick A Short History of Ocean Park, Ocean Park Community Organization, 1982, (With a 1983 update.) 15 pp. 1983, 1930s, 1926, 1920s 1907, 1904, 1900s
"In its earliest days, Ocean Park was almost as much a carnival as a town. Crowded alongside the two hundred or so wood-frame "cottages" were a pleasure pier, an auditorium, a race-track, and a casino, in addition to the huge and ornate bulk of the Turkish Bathhouse, looking more like a movie set than an actual building. A turn-of-the-century photograph of what later became Pier Avenue shows a stylishly dressed crowd moving along a street made up chiefly of cafes, casinos, and gambling parlors, stretching toward the hill on the east side of town.
"The people of Ocean Park experimented with incorporation in 1904, and then decided to "dis-incorporate" in 1907. The town was partly absorbed by Santa Monica, and partly by Venice; but its character remained the same all through the nineteen-twenties and thirties: a thriving summer resort area, attracting out-of-state visitors and the local elite to the wealth of available entertainment opportunities.