Santa Catalina Island Attractions

It is 21mi/34km long and varies between 0.5 to 9mi/0.8 to 14km in width. In the interior there are hills as high as 3135ft/950m. The island was discovered by Cabrillo in 1542. He named it "San Salvador" after his ship, but Vizcaino gave it its present name 40 years later, having dropped anchor there on the feast day of Santa Catalina (St Catharine) of Alexandria. The first North American set foot on the island in 1805, and when Governor Pico gave it to an inhabitant of Santa Barbara in 1846 it became first the property of the United States and later was privately owned. Finally it belonged to the chewing-gum manufacturer William Wrigley and his son Philip, who built the main township of Avalon and made the island into a tourist attraction. Deep-sea fishing (tuna, swordfish, sea perch, barracuda and mackerel), diving, swimming, riding and hunting are the main attractions. The interior and most of the coast are uninhabited.Of the three other neighboring islands the smallest, Santa Barbara (2mi/3.2km long and 1mi/1.6km wide), is included in the Channel Islands National Park, San Clemente is used for naval exercises and San Nicholas, from where all the Indians were taken to the mainland in 1835, is uninhabited.