City of Santa Monica history

In 1872, Colonel Baker purchased the Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica from the Don Francisco Sepulveda heirs for $55,000.

Sometime in 1874, Senator John P. Jones purchased an interest in the San Vicente ranch and, in partnership with Colonel Baker, began laying out the townsite of Santa Monica.

Together, they founded the town of Santa Monica on July 10, 1875.

In 1878, he built the Baker block in Los Angeles, at that time the finest business block in the city.

Arcadia purchased her husband’s holdings on February 4, 1879 for business and personal reasons.

The first City Seal was adopted December 22, 1886, by Ordinance No.

It was located at the foot of Arizona Avenue. It opened in late 1887 and was named for Arcadia Bandini de Baker, wife of Colonel Robert S. Baker, the co-founder of Santa Monica.

1888 Senator Jones’ famous ‘Miramar’ mansion is built on the city block of Ocean Avenue in a site that was originally slated for a grand hotel; the landmark Miramar Moreton Bay Fig Tree marks the estate’s location today.

Colonel Baker died in May, 1894.

Electric trolleys began running in 1896, linking Santa Monica to Los Angeles and stimulating growth.

In 1897, Max Barretto left his position at Port Los Angeles to become Santa Monica’s first chief of police. It was in May 1897 that the police department was created.

1909 Santa Monica’s famed pier, the only pleasure pier on the West Coast, opens to an international crowd of enthusiasts.

The Jones family sold their Miramar in 1912.

An aircraft company established in Santa Monica in 1920 by Donald Douglas was the forerunner of the city’s modern aerospace and communications industries.

1922 Humorist Will Rogers acquires 345 acres in Rustic Canyon and builds a horse ranch and polo field for fellow players that included: Spencer Tracy, Robert Montgomery and Walt Disney.

1924 Senator Jones’ mansion becomes the grand Miramar Hotel

Santa Monica (community) College was established in 1929.

Following his death, Georgina moved to New York where she died in 1936.

The Rex, the most luxurious of these ships, began operations in 1938.

In 1944, the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce began a study of the problems confronting the City.

In the summer of 1945, the Citizens Charter Committee began circulating a petition to place on the upcoming municipal election in December the question of electing 15 freeholders to frame a new charter for the City, and to elect the 15 freeholders at the same election.

The Sears store opened in 1947 followed the next year by the Rand Corporation.

Activision was founded in 1979 by David Crane and Alan Miller—game designers who split with Atari over issues of creator’s rights—and entertainment executive Jim Levy.

Santa Monica Place, an enclosed mall designed by Frank Gehry, was constructed as a redevelopment project in 1980.

That suit was settled in 1982, but by that time Activision had already established itself as a thriving competitor in an expanding industry.

A corporate reorganization led to the departure of much of the company’s creative talent, including the last of its founders, and in 1988 the Activision name was abandoned in favour of Mediagenic, as executives attempted to rebrand the company as a multipurpose software developer.

1989 Third Street Promenade opens, welcoming up to 7,000 visitors daily.

Kotick had purchased a sizable stake in Activision (then Mediagenic) in 1990, when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, and was named CEO the following year.

Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, Michael Morhaime, and Frank Pearce, three UCLA graduates with an interest in electronic gaming.

The company changed its name to Blizzard Entertainment in 1994, shortly before it released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, a real-time strategy game (RTS) that became one of the definitive works in that genre.

Blizzard followed with Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness (1995), a graphically rich expansion on the original that offered a number of interface and multiplayer improvements.

The action role-playing game Diablo (1996) launched with Battle.net, a free service that allowed players to join multiplayer games and chat online.

Activision acquired a new generation of talented designers, and it won critical acclaim with PC offerings like Interstate ’76 (1997), a stylish, funk-infused, 3D vehicle combat game that anticipated such later titles as Grand Theft Auto from Rockstar Games.

Battlenet’s player base expanded dramatically with the release of StarCraft (1998), an RTS game loosely based on the Warcraft model.

1999 Massive beachfront redesign marks the millennium, including the rebirth of legendary Muscle Beach, renovation of Palisades Park and debut of two new beachfront hotels, the last properties to be built along Santa Monica’s shoreline.

Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (2002) incorporated limited role-playing elements into the standard RTS formula, and it allowed end users to create new game maps, import new sound effects, and radically alter the gameplay experience.

Activision and developer Infinity Ward launched the Call of Duty franchise in 2003, and the game immediately challenged Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor series for supremacy of the first-person shooter market.

World of Warcraft (WoW), a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, debuted in 2004, and it drew millions of players to the shared, persistent online world of Azeroth.

Activision joined developers RedOctane and Harmonix Music Systems for the sequels to Guitar Hero (2005), a rhythm-based game that became a popular culture phemonenon.

2007 Santa Monica Travel & Tourism celebrates its 25-year anniversary.

2009 The Santa Monica Pier celebrates its centennial anniversary.

After numerous delays, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty reached stores in July 2010, accompanied by an upgraded version of Battle.net.

While future development of Guitar Hero titles was halted in 2011, other Activision properties remained strong.

2013 Tongva Park, a seven-acre park with majestic views of the Pacific Ocean, opens in the heart of Santa Monica.

2015 Santa Monica launches its Breeze Bike Share program, the first-ever bike sharing program in the Los Angeles region.

In 2016 Activision Blizzard purchased the mobile game company King Digital Entertainment for $5.9 billion.

In November 2021 a report in The Wall Street Journal revealed that Kotick had been aware of the harassment and abuse of female employees for years and had attempted to minimize the severity of the issue to the company’s board of directors.