First-time visitors to the Library are often struck by the charm and unusualness of the building. This stems in part from its having started as a home, then being converted to offices, and only later becoming a library. The original little adobe house is now an exhibit room with changing displays illustrating various facets of our Pacific Southwest heritage.

The Library acquires, organizes, and preserves all kinds of materials pertaining to the history of the Pacific Southwest. This is a region we define as including California, Arizona, and adjacent portions of Nevada, plus the area around the upper end of the Gulf of California. This region has undergone an astonishing transformation over the past 100 years or so. . .a transformation perhaps without parallel in the history of the world. For today, outside of the United States itself, there are only a handful of nations in the world whose economies exceed that of this naturally arid and at one time remote and sparsely inhabited corner of the globe. To provide research materials needed to study and comprehend the varied aspects of this phenomenal development is one of the main purposes of the Library.

During its relatively short existence, the Library has accumulated substantial amounts of historical materials. It contains approximately 25,000 books, pamphlets and other printed items, a very sizeable number of maps and photographs, several hundred thousand papers and documents, and more than 2,000 reels of microfilmed material. Among the microfilm holdings are back files of several of the region's old newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times from its beginnings in 1881. We are also the repository of the archives of the Southern Pacific Historical and Technological Society --that is, for S.P. materials donated and their archives by the Society's more than 3,000 members. (We are NOT, however, the repository for the archives of the former Southern Pacific Company itself, which of course are of enormous quantity.)

Those who use the Library include researchers of all ages, from the young student writing a paper for elementary school to the graduate student preparing a doctoral dissertation; historians, environmental consultants, and so forth; and fiction as well as non-fiction writers. Our directories collection is among the most highly used portion of the Library.

We are a research library rather than a circulating library, however, which means that our materials do not leave the premises.

Dr. William O. Hendricks, Director
Jill Thrasher, Librarian (jill@slgardens.org)
Jennifer Martinez, Archivist (jennifer@slgardens.org)

Current Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday, 9:00 a.m.- 4:30 p.m.

Phone: (949) 673-1880

Fax: (949) 675-5458