Museum Will Now Open Weekly

What the founder had in mind was a quaint seaside community with Spanish-style cottages and lantern-lined streets. Its name was to be Hollywoodland.

How it came to be named Dana Point instead and how it developed into a bustling town of more than 36,000 are among the facts residents can learn at the Dana Point Historical Museum.

Set up two years ago in Suite 106 at City Hall Plaza, the museum at first drew few residents because visitors had to make appointments for private tours.

Starting this month, however, the Dana Point Historical Society, which operates the museum, is opening it free to the public on City Council meeting nights: Tuesdays from 6 to 8 p.m.

“We’re really excited,” museum coordinator Bea Reed said of the once-a-week opening. “Before, the word just didn’t get around.”

Those who stop by will be able to see photographs and artifacts that chronicle Dana Point’s past, from the stone formations in the bluffs at Dove Cove and Blue Lantern Lookout Park to the ancient Native American ceremonial sites and the construction of the harbor.

Also on display are recent documents giving details of the city’s incorporation in 1989 and much older ones, including an artist’s rendering of developer S.H. Woodruff’s plans for the coastal community.

In 1928, Woodruff wanted to build the area’s first resort hotel on the promontory point known today as the Headlands.

But when those dreams ended with the stock market crash in 1929, the city’s development took a much different path, and the town was named for author and sailor Richard Henry Dana, who wrote about the area.

Most of the museum’s historical pieces have been donated by Dana Point residents, many of whom contributed old pictures and papers, Reed said.

Eventually, the historical society hopes to open the museum every day and develop an educational program for students from local schools.

“We are preserving the past for the city,” Reed said.