LACHS member Don Sloper is a native Californian who developed an interest in local history as a newspaper reporter in Long Beach, while an undergraduate in college. After earning an MBA degree from the University of Southern California, and a successful business career, he returned to local history a decade ago, as a researcher, lecturer and active docent.

He is author of Los Angeles’s Chester Place (2007: Arcadia Publishing), now in its second printing, which is about the oldest gated community in Los Angeles, and for 57 years home to oilman Edward L. Doheny’s family.

Sloper is Treasurer of the Los Angeles City Historical Society, a member of the Board of Directors of Las Angelitas del Pueblo, a docent group that conducts tours for more than 12,000 visitors a year at the historic Los Angeles plaza, an active docent for Los Angeles Conservancy Walking tours, a docent for  tours of Chester Place and the Doheny mansion, and a regent for Mount St. Mary’s College.

Don and his wife, Mary, have three children and four grandchildren.

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