PACIFIC ELECTRIC TOPICS 1906

The Peninsula played a highly significant role in the development of the Naples area. Besides being the area first developed, and in which Parsons took an active investment role, it was there at the Channel Club that the Naples plan was formulated. The Club still stands, albeit extensively remodeled, at 61st and the bayfront.

Company ran sightseeing tours from Los Angeles to the Peninsula. At 62nd Street there was a grand pavilion on a pier extending into the ocean, and on the bayside was a pier from which tourists would be ferried across to Naples by gondolas and launches. There was also a restaurant near Chrisman's site. The Alamitos Bay Line was an express to Los Angeles, 6th and Main, which took 45 minutes one way. The fact that Henry Huntington, who owned the P.E. Co., was a stockholder in the Parsons Company probably explains the existence of this wondrous tour. The only way for tourists to reach Naples was from pier by boat, and the view by disembarking passengers was of the six prominent homes on Naples, which may be why they were built on the south side of the island, and spaced so regularly. The gondolas would pass in review on their way to the Naples Hotel at the head of the Grand Canal.