In 1769, the Spanish Portola expedition became the first Europeans to explore this area by land. Soldiers of the expedition named a nearby point Los Pedernales or Punta Pedernales, because they found flints there.[6] The point was given that name on some early maps, but in 1792 British naval explorer George Vancouver dubbed it Point Arguello for José Darío Argüello, a Spanish frontier soldier who was Commandant of the Presidio of Santa Barbara and acting governor of Alta California.[7]
Launch Complex A or LC-A at the Point Arguello Naval Air Station in California, United States, subsequently Point Arguello Launch Complex A or PALC-A at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a launch complex that was used for a number of sounding rocket launches between 1959 and 1966. It was originally built as Launch Complex A or LC-A at the Point Arguello Naval Air Station, and was subsequently transferred to Vandenberg Air Force Base as PALC-A following the merger of Point Arguello into Vandenberg AFB in 1964.
The complex was transferred to the Vandenberg Air Force Base as a result of a merger between it and Point Arguello in 1964, however by that time it was already inactive.
^Wade, Mark. "Point Arguello". Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived from the original on 27 March 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2009.
^Day, Dwayne. "Vandenberg Air Force Base". Spaceflight. US Centennial of Flight Commission. Archived from the original on 11 May 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2009. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^Gudde, Erwin; William Bright (2004). California Place Names (Fourth ed.). University of California Press. p. 17. ISBN0-520-24217-3.
^Hoover, Mildred Brooke; Rensch, Hero Eugene; Rensch, Ethel Grace; Abeloe, William N. (1966). Historic Spots in California (3rd ed.). Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. p. 415.
^Menzel, Sewall (2020). The Pearl Harbor Secret: Why Roosevelt Undermined the U.S. Navy. ABC-CLIO. p. 41. ISBN9781440875861.
