The Church that Started a Town

Pacific Palisades and the local Community United Methodist Church both celebrated their centennial in 2022. To mark this occasion, church member and retired NBC4 News reporter Patrick Healy produced a video history, The Church That Started a Town, featuring scores of vintage photographs from the Clearwater Collection (Santa Monica Public Library), the Young Collection and the Pacific Palisades Historical Society. Recordings of contemporaneous music and hymns of the period were culled from the Library of Congress.

Among the contributors is Chris Walters, great granddaughter of Dr. Oren B. Waite, a Methodist minister who arrived in the Palisades in the early 1920’s, serving both the local congregation and the Pacific Palisades Association which founded the community. Chris Walters and sister Kim Haase generously shared their family archives.

Randy Young, the PPHS archivist who produced five books on various aspects of Palisades history with his late mother, Betty Lou, provided historic insights and oral history interviews he recorded for the Historical Society in the 1990’s with Palisades pioneers.

A massive 19th century church bell that once rang during the Chautauqua events in Temescal Canyon, still rings to this day, although you’ll have to watch the video to find out where.