Avalon is the only incorporated city on Santa Catalina Island, the southernmost of California's Channel Islands, and the southernmost municipality in Los Angeles County. The island lies off the Southern California coast, and nearly all of its permanent residents live in Avalon, a compact harbor town tucked against the hills above Avalon Bay. Because the surrounding island interior is largely protected open space managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, the town itself is dense, walkable, and tightly bounded by terrain. Avalon was incorporated in 1913, but its modern character was largely set a few years later. In 1919, chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. acquired a controlling interest in the island and poured money into infrastructure, beautification, and tourism. His most enduring contribution is the Catalina Casino, an Art Deco landmark that opened in 1929 and still anchors the waterfront as a theater, ballroom, and the island's most recognizable building. The economy is dominated by tourism and hospitality. Well over a million visitors arrive each year, most by ferry, and the waterfront is lined with hotels, restaurants, and shops oriented toward visitors. Behind that visitor-facing core sits a small, year-round community of roughly 3,400 residents. Life here is shaped by the island's isolation: there are no car ferries and no car rentals, so residents and visitors alike get around on foot and by golf cart, and most goods arrive by boat or small plane. For people considering a move, Avalon offers a lifestyle found almost nowhere else in California: a genuine small town on an island, with one K–12 school, a mild maritime climate, and immediate access to hundreds of miles of trails, coves, and open water. The trade-off is distance and logistics, since the mainland is a ferry ride away and daily life follows the island's rhythms.