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.