The South Coast Botanic Garden: From Landfill to Jewel of the Peninsula

Some of the last deposits of refuse in the landfill that became the South Coast Botanic Garden, circa 1965. Photographs courtesy La County Arboretum & Botanical Garden Library, except as noted

Lying at the southwestern edge of the Los Angeles basin is the Palos Verdes Peninsula, an “island” of land with spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Bay to the west. The geologic history of the peninsula goes back to the late Pliocene, when the sea floor was uplifted, and continues into the early Pleistocene, when the peninsula emerged as an island. By the late Pleistocene, enough erosion had occurred to cause this nine-mile-long by five-mile-wide land mass to join with the mainland. Today, it is still possible to view from a distance the old marine terraces, thirteen in all, rising to an elevation of 1,300 feet.

Evidence of its oceanic origins are found in numerous marine fossil deposits, ranging from shellfish to whales. Along the northern and eastern margins of the peninsula runs a continuous 500-foot-thick belt of nearly white diatomite, representing the ancient deposits of marine diato...