San Clemente’s Missing Resort

Ole Hanson was the visionary who master-planned San Clemente more than 96 years ago in the 1920s. He and his partners planned and developed the new town in the empty rolling hills halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

His plan was to provide this new “Spanish Village by the Sea” everything that was needed to thrive as a town. He built many of the important community structures that we use today.

Ole’s team not only laid out the future city with curved streets and neighborhoods, but it also planned and built everything that a new town would need, including the community center, the community pool, the pier, Max Berg Park, Las Palmas School, horse trails and stables, the downtown hotel and a water system to provide drinking water and electricity. Most of the community buildings were gifted to the city for $1 after they were completed.

He also built his sales office at the top of Avenida Del Mar and El Camino Real. The office building was open to the public who came to look at the possibility of buying an empty lot in this isolated little

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