"I offer San Clemente to the lovers of beautiful California, with the firm conviction that there are many who will appreciate what I am doing and who will help to make it the Village beautiful."--Ole Hanson, 1925. 

San Clemente did not just happen as so many other early California cities did in a very haphazard and unplanned manner. It was not to be just another California real estate development. Ole Hanson's vision would not allow that to happen. "He was determined not to have a jumble of architecture having no meaning for the life of the people. The beauty of the natural, rolling contour of the land was not to be scarred by streets slashed ruthlessly through the hills to satisfy the conventional idea of a pattern", wrote Homer Banks in THE STORY OF SAN CLEMENTE,THE SPANISH VILLAGE published in 1930. He wrote" man's view of nature was not to be obstructed by promiscuously arranged houses crowding out the light and the view. There was to be a plan. The community must have form. There was to be beauty." Ole had a canvas, and he was determined to paint a clean picture. 

Hanson, took the best of the Old World and combined it with all that he had found in the New World. In the foreground was the sunlit ocean with a generous expanse of sandy beach, then a gradual slope to the gentle hills, more than 1000 feet above the sea. An ideal climate and a location midway between Los Angeles and San Diego. The Santa Fe ran along the ocean and historic El Camino Real, the King's Highway running through the middle of the proposed village. This was the ideal place for Hanson's dream city. Many thought Ole to be crazy-who would live there, it was so far from the center of activity. But fate called upon Ole Hanson and the Gods conspired to favor it. 

Thus, San Clemente became one of the very first cities to be planned-planned by a visionary who would not permit distractors to influence him. Read Hanson's vision to learn his plan for an ideal village. SUNSET MAGAZINE IN 1929 recognized San Clemente as the wealthiest city per capita in the United States. 

Although time has weathered Ole's original vision, reminders are still very much in evidence. A movement is now afoot to revitalize Ole's orignal dream-a dream that will not die with the first generations of residents, but will continue to live and inspire many generations to come. Homer Banks wrote in 1929, "Time has proven the wisdom of the choice of the site. Not only because of the location and climate and so forth, but because of a certain mysterious unexplainabe charm which seems to have hovered over this section of the California coast for centuries. It is hard to leave San Clemente after living here for a time. Just what this magnet is which lures people from the far parts of the earth to a certain 'charmed spot' on it surface, perhaps a mystic can explain". Banks' prose in 1929 echocs the thoughts of thousands who live and visit our beautiful Spanish Village by the Sea in the latter part of the 20th century.