I don’t know the reason for this photograph, but we’ve got four women motorists standing in front of their automobiles outside the Hotel Virginia on Ocean Blvd at Magnolia Ave in Long Beach. The hotel opened on April 1, 1908, so I’m putting this photo at circa 1910s. I can’t imagine there were too many female motorists back then, so maybe these woman shared a love of automobiles and drove around in a convoy.

**UPDATE** – These are all Beardsley electric cars. These were 4 of 35 participating in “a reliability / publicity run from the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles to the luxe seaside hotel as luncheon guests of the company owner Volney Beardsley.”

Here is a wider show of Hotel Virginia (date unknown, but probably a little later than the above photo if the size of those palm trees are anything to go by)

I don’t know if this is the same corner but I’m wondering if those young palm trees behind the motorists grew up to be the tall palm trees we can see in this image of the corner of Ocean and Magnolia from January 2018.