Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Laguna Beach, CA

Laguna Beach is a seaside resort city in Orange County whose name is Spanish for 'lagoon', set along seven miles of Pacific coastline with 27 beaches and coves.

The town was settled in the 1870s and officially founded in 1887, when its post office opened under the misspelled name 'Lagona' - postmaster Nicholas Isch got the name corrected to Laguna Beach in 1904.

Laguna Beach incorporated as a city on June 29, 1927, after residents who called themselves 'Lagunatics' pushed for cityhood to protect the art colony's small-town atmosphere following the completion of the Pacific Coast Highway in 1926.

Laguna Beach is one of California's most famous art colonies - plein air painters such as William Wendt, Frank Cuprien and Edgar Payne settled there in the early 1900s, and the town's first art gallery, opened in 1918, later became the Laguna Art Museum.

The city hosts the Festival of Arts and its signature Pageant of the Masters, in which real people pose as living reproductions of famous artworks, alongside the Sawdust Art Festival and Art-A-Fair each summer.

Tourism is Laguna Beach's primary industry - an estimated six million people visit each year, more than 250 times the city's resident population.

Laguna Beach had a population of 23,032 in the 2020 census, with 10,758 households and a notably small average household size of just 2.13 people.

Much of Laguna Beach's coastline is protected - 5.88 miles lie within a state marine reserve, and the 7,000-acre Laguna Coast Wilderness Park in the hills above town contains the only natural lakes in Orange County.

In 1933 construction workers on St. Ann's Drive uncovered 'Laguna Woman', the first fossilized skull of a paleoindian found in California.

Laguna Beach was a favorite early Hollywood filming location - starting in 1913, dozens of silent films were shot in its coves, featuring stars such as Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.