Point Vicente Interpretive Center’s guides walk visitors through peninsula’s history

The intimate Point Vicente Interpretive Center lets people teach themselves about Palos Verdes Peninsula’s natural and cultural history as they make their way past photos, artifacts, maps and written material.

But, as volunteer guide Sue Kersey puts it, “you get some of the fun things” you might otherwise miss, if you let a guide--they’re called docents--take you through.

“We tell people how the peacocks got here,” she said, explaining that the pioneer Vanderlip family imported them when they owned most of the peninsula. Pausing before a large photo of Portuguese Bend shortly before a landslide began slowly wiping it out in 1956, docents point out which homes aren’t there anymore. That’s most of them.

There’s a scale model of the peninsula. Docents tell people that the canyon where bustling Peninsula Center is located was a lake millions of years ago. “Crenshaw (Boulevard) was the runoff, which is why it has such a deep ravine,” said Kersey.

For that matter, the entire peninsula was once an island and Pasadena had a shoreline, according to a map that depicts the Los Angeles basin millions of years ago. “Our Pasadena visitors are always delighted to know that they once had oceanfront property,” Kersey said.

Some of the docents are able to place themselves into peninsula history. When docent Bea Semos shows pictures of the 1961 wreck of the Greek freighter Dominator off Rocky Point, she recalls, “My son was in kindergarten and came running in and said, “Can we go see it, mom?’ ”

Rancho Palos Verdes Recreation and Parks Director Mary Thomas calls the interpretive center “a jewel and crown of our park system.” The city built the museum in 1984 on bluff parkland just north of the Point Vicente Lighthouse, which dates to 1926.

Residents provided artifacts and memories that became part of the center’s collection. It covers everything from animal life to American Indians to rancho days to whaling; it tells of the peninsula’s growth from barren scrubland that no one wanted to a wealthy exurb of $1-million homes.

During the 1988-89 fiscal year, the center had a paid attendance of 26,336, though walking, picnicking or looking at native plants in the adjoining parkland is free. “It’s wall-to-wall people on the weekends,” said Kersey.

She heads the docent group, which numbers about 100 and sees to it that guides are always at the center. Docents like things to be “hands on” on their tours. Holding a small length of baleen--which looks like a piece of plastic with fringe--Kersey this week asked a couple of visitors what they thought it was.

Is it bone, a visitor asked. No, she explained, not bone, but a food-filtering system used by some whales that is made of the same stuff as fingernails.

Youngsters are always asked to touch the large gray whale vertebra on display, and then touch their own spine. “That makes them really realize how big a whale is,” Semos said.

The big, egg-shaped stone anchor found in deep water off Redondo Beach has become not only something to touch but something to theorize about. It is similar to anchors used 2,000 years ago by Chinese sailors, prompting some to wonder if Cabrillo really was in 1542 the first outlander to spy the peninsula coastline. “But it could have been an anchor from whaling days,” said Kersey.

“This is where I take people when they visit,” said Barbara Pavliscak of Palos Verdes Estates. “It gives them a view of the peninsula.”

But as many times as she visits, Pavliscak says she always learns something new.

This week, accompanied by lifelong friend Mary Ellen Wedding from Toledo, Ohio, Pavliscak said her lesson was about harvesting kelp: “I wondered what those boats were doing in the kelp beds; now I know they’re fishing, taking off the top two feet.”

Kelp, an emulsifier, turns up in everything from ice cream to toothpaste.

During the four-month winter whale-watching season, the center’s terrace and observation floor is a favorite lookout for the migrating grays. And Kersey said that, on a year-round basis, whales are what visitors ask about the most.

“People want to know when they can see the whales,” she said, “and we always say at 10, 2, and 4, but it’s best at 6.” People are amazed that so many varieties exist, she said, and are overwhelmed when they realize just how big they are.

Wedding was no exception.

“I’m from the flat Midwest, but I loved learning about whales, about what baleen was used for,” she said. “Now I understand what they mean when they talk about women wearing whalebone stays.”