Avalon City Tour

Catalina Island's only real town packs pirates, movie stars, and a casino that's never hosted a single game of chance into a few walkable blocks. On this walking tour, you'll find out how a chewing gum tycoon transformed a remote island into a Mediterranean-style escape. You'll also hear the island's most persistent legends, and the truth behind them.

The tour starts at the Wrigley Fountain on Crescent Avenue and follows the harbor past the Holly Hill House, a Victorian landmark tied to a colorful bachelor's romance. You'll pass the spot where a teenage Norma Jeane Baker, before becoming Marilyn Monroe, worked at a candy shop, and hear how the island got its name from an Arthurian legend rather than its founder's surname.

You'll walk out to the Catalina Casino, a domed 1929 landmark with hand-painted murals and a pipe organ, and learn why its name has nothing to do with gambling. Along the seawall, you'll spot a marine preserve where orange Garibaldi fish dart beneath the surface, and hear about UFO sightings and sunken Spanish treasure still hidden somewhere offshore. The tour ends back at the Wrigley Fountain, where William Wrigley Jr.'s vision for a public island began.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Spot the Chimes Tower and the Zane Grey Pueblo, home to the author who wrote westerns and loved fishing
• Learn why golf carts outnumber cars on the island, and what it takes to bring your own vehicle here
• Look across the bay to the Wrigley Mansion, once a presidential retreat and now a working bed and breakfast
• Hear how a herd of bison, brought for a 1920s film shoot, still roams the island's interior today
• Visit the Tuna Club, whose gentleman anglers once included Winston Churchill and helped write the rules of modern sport fishing
• Discover the Swanson House, a producer's vacation home shaped like the state of California

By the time you're back at the fountain, you'll know exactly why Wrigley wanted Catalina remembered as the People's Island.