10. Venice of America developed the reputation of the Coney Island of the Pacific
After draining the marshy lands to the south of Ocean Park, Abbot Kinney installed canals and built a small resort community. Besides the canals and bridges which crossed them, Kinney built Venetian-style structures throughout his resort. Gondolas plied the canals, manned by gondoliers imported from Venice, Italy. A pier jutted out into the Pacific, with various amusements for visitors. Kinney, a real estate developer and water distribution specialist, hired entertainments both educational (a marine aquarium) and decidedly low-brow (what were then known as freak shows). A miniature steam railroad conveyed visitors around the park, and a trolley brought visitors from Los Angeles.
Weekends and holidays saw between 100-150,000 visitors daily. It became a major tourist attraction for those visiting Los Angeles in 1921. Kinney died in 1920, and his heirs failed to maintain the standards he applied in operating his amusement area. In 1925 it became part of the City of Los Angeles. By then the canals were highly polluted, and the area largely run down. Most of the canals were drained and paved over by the end of the 1920s. Today’s Venice Beach community sits on what once offered a tourist an amusing diversion while visiting Los Angeles.