Nightshade

Santa Catalina Island, commonly known as Catalina Island, is a rocky island located about 22 miles of the coast of Southern California. Part of the Channel Islands archipelago, Catalina is approximately 22 miles long and eight miles across at its widest point. The island is known for its rugged beauty, clear waters, and Mediterranean climate, which have made it a popular tourist destination for over a century, despite its relative isolation from the mainland. Most of the island’s 4,200 full-time residents live in the city of Avalon, the island’s primary harbor. The tension between mainland Californians and Catalina Island locals is an important thread in Nightshade, which takes place almost entirely on the island.

Catalina Island was originally inhabited by the Tongva, an Indigenous people who called the island “Pimu” and used it as a base for an expansive trade network that stretched along the California coast. In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed the island for the Spanish, naming it “San Salvador.” The island was renamed “Catalina” in 1602 when another Spanish explorer, Sebastian Vizcaino, landed safely on the island on St. Catherine’s day. In the late 18th century, Russian fur hunters began trapping sea otters on the island, decimating the local Indigenous population. By the late 19th century, the island was officially a part of the state of California but had few inhabitants, most of them small-scale cattle ranchers.

After a few failed attempts at developing tourism in the early 1900s, the island gained new prominence in 1919, when chewing-gum mogul William Wrigley, Jr., invested millions in developing the island’s primary town, Avalon. Wrigley was responsible for major construction on the island, including the Catalina Casino, a waterfront ballroom that was later repurposed as a movie theater. As a result of these investments, tourism to the island surged. The island’s famed American bison, which feature prominently in the plot of Nightshade, arrived by accident, brought to the island in 1925 for a film production and left behind when it proved too difficult to remove them. They quickly established themselves in the island’s remote backcountry and became another major tourist draw. Although the island was closed to tourists during World War II, when it was used for military training, it has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in California, with nearly 1 million visitors arriving each year.

Catalina is uniquely dependent on tourism, even among island communities. The island’s semi-arid climate and lack of fresh water make farming nearly impossible, and its distance from the mainland limits opportunities for trade. Prior to Wrigley’s massive investment in developing Avalon as a tourist town, the island was nearly uninhabited. Though the novel often depicts the island as an idyllic place whose cultural purity is threatened by tourism, Catalina’s local population actually came into existence as a result of tourism.