Adventurer's Club of Los Angeles

As I am interested in the history of Los Angeles, you might imagine my excitement when this turned up at yard sale this past weekend.

The Adventurer's Club of Los Angeles was founded in 1922 as an extension of the New York Adventurer's Club that started a decade earlier. Basically an explorer's fraternity, it is a "traditional gentleman's club" whose members meet to share tales of their adventures. Members have included Cecil B. DeMille, Raold Amundsen, and Southern California's favorite explorer John Goddard among many others deemed the "brightest and most adventurous". It still exists today, meeting once a month to share tales of adventure. They have a website where additional information can be read.

This plaque would have been passed out to members around 1972. If the story written on the back is to be believed (and I have no reason to doubt it), the wood of the plaque was salvaged from the deck of the USS Indiana; the medallion cast from metal of the ship's propeller.

The USS Indiana (BB-58) was a battleship involved in the Pacific theater during WWII that fought off kamikaze pilots during the invasion of Okinawa. She was decommissioned in 1947 and sold for scrap in 1963.