The Lantern Streets

The streets of Dana Point’s historic core are named after colored lanterns: Street of the Violet Lantern, Street of the Blue Lantern, Street of the Golden Lantern, and others. The names come from a tradition documented in local histories: trading ships anchored in the natural harbor 200 years ago hung different-colored lanterns to advertise their wares to people onshore¹. The naming was the work of Sidney H. Woodruff, a Los Angeles homebuilder who developed the area starting in 1926 and chose the lantern theme to connect his new subdivision to the coastline’s hide-trade past.

At a glance: If you’re navigating Dana Point’s older neighborhoods and notice the lantern-themed street names, they trace back to a 1926 real-estate developer who was romanticizing the 1830s hide-trade era. The area is still called Lantern Village.

The Dana Point Syndicate

In 1923, Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler and General M.H. Sherman, director of the Pacific Electric Railway Company, formed a real estate group to develop the Hollywood Hills and hired Sidney H. Woodruff to lead it. In 1926, Woodruff, Chandler, and Sherman created the Dana Point Syndicate, purchasing 1,388 acres of coastal land. They invited movie producers, company presidents, and other investors to join.

Woodruff promised tree-lined and paved streets, electricity, telephones, sidewalks, water mains, storm drains, and sewers. He built about three dozen homes and several commercial buildings in what is now the Dana Point historic core, home to about 12,000 residents today.

The Dana Point Inn

Woodruff’s most ambitious plan was the Dana Point Inn, a Mediterranean-style resort hotel on the cliffs overlooking the harbor. After a celebratory groundbreaking in 1930, workers poured a three-story foundation and dug a 135-foot shaft for an elevator to carry guests to and from the beach. The Great Depression halted construction. Woodruff sought financing through the 1930s but abandoned the project in 1939 and sold the syndicate’s remaining holdings.

Thirty-four of the original thirty-five Woodruff residences are still occupied today.

Lantern Village Now

The Lantern Village neighborhood retains its original street grid and naming scheme. The area is walkable and contains most of Dana Point’s independent shops and restaurants outside the harbor. The colored-lantern names remain the most visible daily artifact of the town’s 1920s founding era, connecting a suburban Orange County neighborhood to a hide-trade anchorage that preceded it by a century.

Further Reading

• Dana Point Harbor

References