The island is everything all at once a home for some of California’s oldest history, and a modern weekend getaway for families, boaters, and partiers.
It’s also - like many islands with a subtropical climate and more than 260 days of sun per year - an idyllic place to spend a day, sipping on mai tais, downing fish tacos, and taking in the sights from a golf cart. As part of an archipelago of islands that cluster off the western edge of the United States mainland, Catalina is a unique, inviting place with a deep history that winds back through the Civil War, past the earliest Spanish and Portuguese sailors, to early Tongva people, who are said to have lived on what is technically named Santa Catalina Island more than 8,000 years ago. The wavy outline of the 22-mile-long island hovers just below the horizon, calling to those on the mainland the same way it has for centuries. On a clear enough day from just about any vantage point with real elevation around Los Angeles, the coastline of Catalina Island is visible out in the Pacific.
