Walking Routes Through Avalon, Catalina Island

Avalon is a town that invites you to explore it on foot.

Avalon is easy to navigate on foot. A walk beside the water is enjoyable, with its inviting shops and oceanfront dining, but Avalon’s heritage comes through most clearly when you wander its neighborhood streets, slow down, and watch island life away from the busy beach front.

George Shatto first planned the town of Avalon in the late 1880’s. At that time, the graceful crescent beach served as a tenting area for mainland visitors who came to Catalina Island to fish. Shatto wanted to build a lasting resort community, and also hoped to earn a fast return through real estate, so he constructed the Hotel Metropole and a wharf for arriving guests. In 1887, Shatto brought in surveyors to lay out streets on the level ground behind the crescent shaped bay. Many of the future home sites had begun as tent sites only 20 feet wide, which left the new lots unusually narrow. Shatto’s sister-in-law, Etta Marilla Whitney, chose the name Avalon from a phrase in Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, a King Arthur Saga. After 4 years and without a strong real estate market, Mr. Shatto went into foreclosure. Catalina Island was later purchased by three Banning brothers, the sons of Phineas Banning, a pioneer in stagecoach and steamship transportation, founder of the city of Wilmington, the Wilmington Transportation Co. and the port of Los Angeles.

The Banning brothers created the Santa Catalina Island Company to promote Avalon as a resort destination. Avalon became internationally known for big game fishing, and guests traveled there to swim in clear waters, tour by glass-bottom boats, which were invented in Avalon in the 1890’s, play golf on one of the first courses in southern California, built in 1892, and enjoy big band dancing. Avalon incorporated as a city in June of 1913 with just 500 residents. The community endured a devastating loss when the Great Fire of 1915 destroyed many town buildings and hotels.

In 1919, William Wrigley, Jr. bought controlling interest in the Santa Catalina Island Company and Catalina Island. Over the next ten years, Mr. Wrigley launched an energetic program of economic development that included the Catalina Country Club, Bird Park, and the legendary Catalina Casino Building. Visitors reached the island on two steamships, the S.S. Avalon and S.S. Catalina. Many Avalon houses also date from this period. After his father’s death, William Wrigley’s son, Philip Knight Wrigley, continued shaping the Island resort. He brought the Big Band era to the Catalina Casino, gave Crescent Avenue along the beach an early California character, and created the mountain top Airport-in-the-Sky.

Avalon remains a welcoming residential town with a deep legacy of cottages, homes, and historic structures. During your visit, try either or both of these walking routes. Each one offers a way to learn the community’s history while moving through its quiet residential streets at your own pace.

Walk #1: Discover Avalon’s Flats

• Time: 45 minutes
• Terrain: Mostly flat city streets

This easy route leads through Avalon’s flat residential neighborhoods. Most of the walk is level, with only one brief uphill stretch.

Start at Crescent Avenue and the Cabrillo Fountain at Wrigley Plaza, then proceed up Sumner Avenue. To the right, the Catalina Crafters storefront is decorated with beautiful and historic Catalina Island tiles. To the left stands the four-story Glenmore Plaza Hotel, originally built in 1892, renovated in 2018, and the oldest hotel in Avalon, having survived the Great Fire of 1915. The Hotel Atwater, which opened in 1920, is on the right.

Continue ahead and, on the right, you’ll find the Los Angeles County complex, home to the Avalon Public Library, the Justice Court, and the Sheriff’s Department. Avalon is within Los Angeles County, and the city contracts for these services. The complex sits on the former homesite of William Banning, one of the Banning Brothers and the father of famous WWII leader General George S. Patton Jr., who met his wife on Catalina Island in the early 1900’s.

Opposite the Avalon Public Library is the Island Tour Plaza, where tour buses and hummers pick up visitors heading into Catalina’s interior. Restrooms are available in the Tour Plaza, with the passcode available from the Mini Golf kiosk. Between the two restroom entrances is a colorful Catalina Tile fountain that originally belonged to Bird Park, the aviary created by Wrigley.

Just beyond the Island Tour Plaza are the Mini Golf Gardens, an 18-hole miniature golf course that opened in 1973. As you keep walking up Sumner Avenue, you’ll pass Vons, Avalon’s grocery store, which held its grand opening in January 2019.

At Sumner and Beacon, just past Vons, turn left, then make a right onto Eucalyptus, the first street on your right. This peaceful street is closed to vehicles and lined with small historic cottages, many updated over time. As you walk the full length of Eucalyptus, you’ll see that it is Avalon’s only street with two trees growing in its center.

At the end of Eucalyptus, cross Tremont Street and continue up Avalon Canyon Street toward Country Club Drive. Here the grade becomes a little steeper. Walk uphill for a short ½ block and you’ll reach the Catalina Country Club, once home to William Wrigley Jr.’s Chicago Cubs spring training camp. It is also home to the Catalina Golf Course, the oldest operating golf course west of the Mississippi. The course hosted the famed Bobby Jones Tournament from 1931-1955. The Catalina Island Country Club is a striking example of Early California Revival architecture, with cream colored walls, deep green trim and a Spanish tile roof. Its courtyard, dining room, boardroom, bay room, and casual pub serve as an appealing setting for small meetings and weddings.

From the Country Club, retrace your steps downhill to the traffic circle locals call 5 Corners. To the left, near Avalon Canyon and Tremont, you’ll see the cream-colored building and red roofs of the Avalon City Hall complex, where approximately 50 city employees work. Cross from here, turn right onto Tremont, and pass the group of garden cottages on your right. Streets to your left lead back toward the beach. Turn left down Descanso Avenue to return to Avalon’s 1920’s residential character, when many of these houses were among the first pre-cut tract homes put up by the Santa Catalina Island Company. Some still show the one-level peaked and capped roof style of the early period.

Follow Descanso for 2 blocks. Many of the homes have compact driveways sized just large enough for a golf cart. At the corner of Descanso and Third, look to the right for a two-story white house. It was built from cabins taken from the Banning brothers’ old steamer tugs, the SS Warrior and SS Falcon, which carried visitors to Avalon at the turn of the 19th century.

At Third St, turn left and continue to Catalina Avenue, the next street. Turn right at the corner to return toward the waterfront and Crescent Avenue, where the walk began.

Walk #2: Climb Into Avalon’s Heights

• Time: 45 minutes
• Terrain: Up and downhill city streets

This route moves through residential streets and commercial areas before climbing into the heights of Avalon.

Begin at Crescent and Marilla, at the corner of Bellanca Hotel and the former location of El Encanto Plaza, the historic marketplace that first opened in 1933 as an arts and crafts showplace.

Walk up Marilla Avenue, to the right of Bellanca Hotel, until you reach Vieudelou Avenue, the first street on your right. Vieudelou is French for view of the water. As you turn onto Vieudelou, the house on the left corner is the oldest house in Avalon and one of the few buildings in town to survive the 1915 fire. About two-thirds of the way up Vieudelou, on the left-hand side, stands the former Catholic Church, now used as a private residence.

Keep climbing through the area known as Vinegar Hill, a name dating from Prohibition, when local residents in the neighborhood made moonshine. Revenuers periodically raided the operations and poured everything into the street. As the moonshine fermented there, the area took on the smell of vinegar, giving Vinegar Hill its nickname.

Where the street bends to the right, the outside of the curve has a shaded garden spot and a bench. It’s a good place to pause before the road continues farther uphill. Stage Road is the next road on the left; follow it up the hill. At the fork, where there is a pleasant garden and another bench, stay left and continue along Avalon’s heights. From here, the view stretches over Avalon’s sunny western area, the whole town, the bay, the channel, and the mainland beyond.

Proceed straight until you reach upper Whittley Avenue. Across the street and to the right are Spanish-style homes built in the 1920’s. Turn left downhill and you’ll pass homes in many different styles, representing nearly every decade.

On the left side of Whittley is the Pacific Bell Telephone company building, finished with historic Catalina Tile. The last manual switchboard in the Bell system operated here until 1978. Just beyond the telephone building on the left is the historic Hotel Catalina. The first Hotel Catalina burned in a fire in 1915, but was quickly rebuilt.

Continue down Whittley toward the water, and you’ll arrive back at Crescent Avenue, only a short ½ block from your starting point.