History Tour Smartphone APP now brings Avila Beach, a tiny seaside community in San Luis Obispo County right to your fingertips. The APP is accessible in the Google and iTunes APP stores. Search “Avila Beach Historical Tour” for the free download.
The APP is a comprehensive historical overview of the town, since its official founding in 1874 up until the remodel of the downtown in the late 1990’s. The APP offers four tours: Port Harford, Avila Beach, Front Street, and surrounding Avila, all which focus on the key businesses, industries, people and places. From the Point San Luis Lighthouse, to the narrow-gauge railroad and the construction of the Harford Pier, to the People’s Pier, Cottage Row homes and Cave Landing, the APP covers the essentials of what made Avila Beach such an integral part of San Luis Obispo County’s past.
There are also biographies of many of the important founding fathers, such as Juan Avila, Ah Louis, John Harford, and David Mallagh.
The Avila Beach Community Foundation in partnership with local historian Jack San Filippo created the APP, now accessible in the Google and iTunes APP stores. The APP is free to download, and allows the reader to either take a mapped tour of the town or they can enjoy the tours and history from the leisure of their own home. Historical photos accompany the text, many of which were generously donated for the project by local historians and groups.
San Filippo, a third-generation Avileño says, “The Avila Beach Historical Tour APP is a comprehensive historical overview of everything important in Avila Beach’s past. People such as John Harford and Ah Louis, to the Point San Luis Lighthouse, the piers and the businesses that helped make the town; the APP’s intention is to inform the public of how Avila Beach was built and why it is so important to the history of San Luis Obispo County.”
Penny Burciaga, from the Avila Beach Community Foundation, partnered with San Filippo and was responsible for the technical aspect of the APP project.
The Avila Beach Community Foundation funded the APP as part of it “Project Funding and Support for Reflecting the History and Culture of the Avila Beach Community.” Executive Director Rick Cohen states, “The “Foundation” is very pleased to have awarded a grant to develop this APP in an effort to display the rich history of Avila Beach through contemporary modalities. We encourage locals and visitors alike to download the free APP and take an exciting pictorial and narrative tour of Avila’s past.”
Jack San Filippo has a M.A. from Cal Poly’s History Department, is a special docent for the Point San Luis Lighthouse, is on the San Luis Obispo County Historical Center Board of Directors, and co-author of the Arcadia Press publication, The History of Avila Beach.