Naming Laguna Beach

History is historically replete with enduring endemic mysteries. For decades both professional and avocational historians dealing with California’s often patch-work history have wondered, puzzled, opined and even contentiously disputed how, when, and even why Laguna Beach was called Laguna Beach.

As Ms. Janz so clearly documents in Naming Laguna Beach the answer to this curious tea-pot tempest may now be put to rest. Laguna Beach’s naming was, literally, .. .in the mail.

From a local multi-generational nineteenth-century Laguna family who served among the little town’s pioneer postmasters, Ms. Janz grew up hearing all the stories and theories.

Digging into her antecedent’s personal lives, recollections and preserved period documentation, Ms. Janz presents indisputable foundational sources, including postmarked period envelopes, official U.S. Postal Service communications, period newspaper articles and advertisements, all of which graphically illustrates the series of often seemingly whimsical Postal Service policy changes, bureaucratic bungles, simple misspellings, and Catch-22 ineptitudes that form the warp and woof of California’s amazing history.

Thankfully Ms. Janz has made the historical effort to straighten things out, post-haste.