South Bay History: How and when did the South Bay come to be known by that name?
Partial front page of the Redondo Daily South Bay Breeze from Dec. 18, 1922. (Daily Breeze archives)
In 1922, The Daily Breeze newspaper took great pains to carve out the South Bay as a distinct region
Geography tells us why the chunk of coastal Los Angeles County land south of Ballona Creek became known as the “South Bay.”
The area from Playa del Rey down to the Palos Verdes Peninsula forms the lower half of Santa Monica Bay, hence the “South Bay” sobriquet.
The South Bay’s boundaries are less well-defined than those of the upper half of the Bay. Purists insist that only the cities directly fronting the coast make up the South Bay, but over time the name has come to encompass nearby inland communities as well
The “when,” pinpointing the exact date and origins of the usage of the South Bay name, is more difficult.
Early mentions of the South Bay as a distinct area in newspapers are elusive. The comings and goings of a steamship by the name of the South Bay is all that turns up in the early part of the 1900s in most newspaper archives.
Of course, the name may have been in popular usage if not in print, since multiple cities in the region were founded or incorporated before 1920. (These include Redondo Beach, San Pedro, Torrance, El Segundo, Wilmington, Hawthorne, Manhattan Beach and Inglewood.) But this is just speculation.
The Daily Breeze newspaper took great pains to carve out the South Bay as a distinct region when it announced its plans to cover more than just its home city of Redondo Beach in its edition of Dec. 18, 1922.
This map shows one version what makes up the South Bay (outlined in red), but omits Westchester and LAX. (Wikipedia)
On that day, the paper changed its name on its masthead from the Redondo Breeze to the Redondo Daily South Bay Breeze. It added separate editions earmarked with similar names for Torrance and the other South Bay cities. (It would physically move to Torrance in 1965.) The paper also changed from a weekly to a daily.
That rather ungainly mouthful of a name was pared down later in the 1920s to simply the South Bay Daily Breeze, and was officially listed as such in the local phone book beginning in 1931. It would retain that name for decades before becoming simply the Daily Breeze in 1974.
One of the earliest references to the South Bay as an entity in the Los Angeles Times is a Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce ad from March 20, 1923. The paper’s earlier references to the “South Coast” refer not to the South Bay, but to beachfront communities in Orange County.
The San Pedro-Wilmington area is sometimes referred to as part of the South Bay, but is more commonly known as the Harbor Area, due to the opening of the Port of Los Angeles there in 1907. The term “South Bay and Harbor Area” includes the entire region.
The name “South Bay” is by no means unique to the southwest Los Angeles County region to which locals refer. Nor was it the first area so named.
Equally or even more well-known South Bays are located along North America’s coastlines. One of the most well-known adds a qualifier. The 45-mile-long Great South Bay is a shallow lagoon situated between Fire Island and Long Island in New York state.
Back over on this coast, the San Francisco Bay Area’s South Bay encompasses Santa Clara County and environs, including San Jose, Santa Clara and Palo Alto. Most of what is considered Silicon Valley is located there.
The “South Bay” appellation began being used more universally to describe that area in the mid-20th century, when technology began replacing agriculture as the area’s chief industry. It accelerated with the explosive growth of tech companies there in the 1990s.
California has a third well-known South Bay in San Diego County. This area lies between the southern end of San Diego Bay and the Mexico border and includes Imperial Beach, National City and Chula Vista, among other cities.
Other South Bays exist in Florida (a city near Lake Okeechobee), Texas (a body of water south of Padre Island) and Massachusetts (a newly developed area near Boston).
Several other South Bays can be found worldwide, including ones in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Four of them even exist in mostly uninhabited Antarctica.
It may not be the only region so named, but Los Angeles County’s South Bay retains its own definite identity and characteristics that make the name instantly identifiable to residents and non-residents alike.
Sources: Daily Breeze archives. Los Angeles Times archives. Redondo Reflex archives. “South Bay facts for kids,” Kiddle.co website. Wikipedia.