Interpretive Center Is Trip Through Peninsula’s Past

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 is 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,” Kersey said.

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 million-dollar homes.

During the 1988-89 fiscal year, the interpretive 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,” Kersey said.

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 asked a couple of visitors what they thought it was.

Is it bone, a visitor asked? No, Kersey 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.