Abbot’s Landing named for man who loved shining shells

Young Chang

The area just west of the Balboa Pavilion, about where the Fun

Zone is today and along the beach just beyond Bay Island, used to be

known as Abbott’s Landing.

Edward J. Abbott and his wife were among the pioneer couples and

families in Newport Beach. In the late 1800s, they owned summer

houses there and ran a small shell-shining business on Bay Island,

where they cleaned and polished abalone shells.

He brought in soil from inland areas and planted some of the very

first trees, said longtime Newport Beach resident Gay Wassall-Kelly.

“I think they were eucalyptus trees,” she said. “And when this

book was written in 1988, it was said that some of them were still

along the way there, where Abbott’s Landing was.”

James Felton’s “Newport Beach, The First Century, 1888-1988” says

Abbott and another pioneer family planted varieties including palms

and Monterey Cypresses also.

Edward Abbott was innovative and business minded.

For his shell-shining business, he used windmills to power the

machines, according to Felton’s book.

He had a paddlewheel steamboat business that, when it wasn’t

transporting dirt from the mainland to Newport Landing, would take

people on cruises around the harbor, Wassall-Kelly said.

He was the one that discovered there was fresh water underneath

the sand in Newport Beach, Wassall-Kelly added.

Felton’s book says people who camped at Abbott’s Landing drank

this water, which was also used for planting trees. Other families

continued to build cottages in this area and just the presence of

people there helped Newport Beach thrive in little ways, even

involving pleasure sailboats.

The borders of Abbott’s Landing started to fade into the parts of

Newport Beach in 1906, when the Balboa Pavilion and the Balboa Pier

were opened.

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a

historical Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at

(949) 646-4170; e-mail at [email protected]; or mail her at c/o

Daily Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.