Old Salt Lake

Tongva people dug salt from the bottom of a spring-fed lake here and traded it inland, and the village beside it was Onoova-nga, the place of salt. In December 1854 Manuel Domínguez sold 215 acres of Rancho San Pedro, the lake with it, to Henry Allanson and William Johnson. They laid out an evaporation pond, then a boiling house of forty-eight wood-fired kettles, and hauled the sacks ten miles overland to San Pedro. The yield was 450 tons in 1879. Southern California Edison filled the lake in 1948 and built a power plant on it.

What the plaque says

This marker locates the site near which the Indians and early California settlers came to obtain their salt, which at many times was more valuable than gold. Presented by Tierra del Rey Parlor #300 Native Daughters of the Golden West March 27, 1955

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bruce's Beach — 3.1 mi
  Willa and Charles Bruce ran a seaside resort here for Black families until the city took the land in 1924. It came back in 2022.
• Point Vicente — 7.5 mi
  Volunteers have counted the gray whale migration from this bluff for four decades, over water where shore whalers nearly finished the same herds.
• The Banning Museum — 9.0 mi
  The man who made a harbor out of an open bay: freight, dredging, the first railroad in Southern California, and a cupola for watching ships.
• Drum Barracks — 9.3 mi
  The Union Army built its Southern California headquarters in a county that had voted against Lincoln two to one, and stabled the Army camels here.

More markers nearby

• Manhattan Beach State Pier — 2.4 mi
• Site of Adobe Home of José Dolores Sepulveda — 4.7 mi
• Site of the Childhood Home of the Beach Boys — 6.1 mi
• Site of Old Whaling Station — 8.5 mi