Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Trailer life in Santa Monica



In the 1930s trailers could be spotted on Santa Monica Beach full of visitors enjoying the sand and surf. The Miramar Trailer park was located north of the pier in this photograph from 1935. Douglas Aircraft experienced a boom during World War II, when the aircraft factory ran three shifts, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to meet production demands. At one time during the peak in employment in the mid-1940s, 44,000 people worked at the Santa Monica facility. With this massive influx of workers, demands for housing in the area grew resulting in zoning for residential housing up to the perimeter of the airport in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Trailer parks sprung up all around Santa Monica to accommodate workers. The two remaining trailer parks in the City are Village Trailer Park on Colorado Avenue and Mountain View Mobile Inn on Stewart Street.