The island, the oasis, and the city: Santa Catalina, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, and Southern California's shaping of American life and leisure

Contributing to cultural, urban, and environmental history, this dissertation examines the promotion of leisure in Southern California from the 1870s through the twentieth century. It utilizes sources including tourist and promotional ephemera, travel journals, correspondence, corporate records, and government documents, as well as architecture and material culture. The study attempts to answer three central questions: Why did the promotion of Southern California as a realm of leisure prove so popular? What effect did this promotion have on the region's development and diverse population? Finally, how did the leisure of Southern California shape national culture?; To address these questions, this dissertation examines leisure as a cultural product, as a resort phenomenon, and as a facet of urban life. It first explores the promotion of Southern California beginning in the 1870s, focusing on the career of author and editor Charles Fletcher Lummis. The recreational vision he posited for Southern California---as a place where leisure was not part of a vacation but rather a way of life---proved influential.; Successful promotion led to resort development, and the dissertation then takes as its central case studies Santa Catalina Island and Palm Springs. These two resorts differed markedly, yet both achieved national influence. Catalina pioneered a corporate model of resort development. The island also engendered a new national interest in the conservation of marine environmental resources. Palm Springs popularized new types of leisure, and contributed to new attitudes towards American deserts. Most importantly, Palm Springs created new architectural and urban forms replicated at resorts and in cities across the nation, making America more like Southern California. At both resorts, however, white leisure depended upon---and often conflicted with---the labor of people of color.; The dissertation concludes by examining residential recreation in Los Angeles. The promotion of recreation was central to its growth, yet Los Angeles incorporated an ambivalent conceptualization of leisure. This yielded poor planning for parks and the restriction of recreational space. These problems spread as Los Angeles became a national model for urban development. In each context, this dissertation traces the inextricably connected histories of Southern California and American leisure.