Timms' Point and Landing

Before the breakwater there was no harbor here, only an open roadstead where ships anchored offshore and small boats carried the cargo in. Augustus W. Timms, a German immigrant, bought Sepúlveda's Landing on the mudflats in 1852 and built it up with a wharf, warehouse, corrals, a hotel, and stages running the twenty-odd miles to Los Angeles. He was Phineas Banning's rival for that traffic, and for fifty years the point carried his name. His widow sold the ground to the Southern Pacific in 1902.

What the plaque says

In 1852 German immigrant Augustus W. Timms obtained Sepulveda's Landing on the mudflats near here. He built a wharf, added a warehouse, corral and other facilities to service shipping and running of stages to Los Angeles. Timms was a pioneer in the development of the harbor and for over fifty years this area was known as Timms Point.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Terminal Island and Furusato — 0.4 mi
  Three thousand Japanese Americans built a village here they called Furusato, and in February 1942 were given forty-eight hours to leave it.
• The Port of Los Angeles — 0.7 mi
  The busiest container port in the country, sitting on ground that was dredged into existence: marsh, then landfill, then Pier 400.
• Korean Friendship Bell — 1.7 mi
  Seventeen tons of bronze given by Korea for the American bicentennial, on the bluff above the harbor its troops shipped out from.
• Point Fermin Lighthouse — 1.9 mi
  The first light into San Pedro Bay, lit in 1874 by two sisters, dark since Pearl Harbor, on a bluff that is still sliding.

More markers nearby

• Casa de San Pedro — 0.8 mi
• Liberty Hill Site — 0.9 mi
• S.S. Catalina — 1.5 mi
• Site of Home of Diego Sepúlveda — 2.0 mi