424 Area Code – Santa Monica, California: Location, Time Zone & History

West Los Angeles and the South Bay form an unusual economic pairing under area code 424: Hollywood-adjacent entertainment and media companies sit alongside a historic aerospace corridor running through Hawthorne, El Segundo, and Redondo Beach, now home to firms like SpaceX. Technology, real estate, and tourism round out an economy shaped as much by geography as by industry.

This shared territory traces back to 1991, when area code 310 split off from 213 to cover West Los Angeles and the South Bay on its own. By the late 1990s, growing demand called for relief again, but a proposed geographic split met strong opposition from Westside residents and drew heavy coverage in the Los Angeles Times. The dispute helped prompt California's Consumer Area Code Relief Act of 1999, and when relief finally arrived in 2006, it took the form of an overlay instead: 424 became the state's first overlay code, placed into service on the 310 numbering plan area after nearly seven years of delay.

Beyond its anchor cities of Santa Monica and Torrance, the 424/310 region also serves Beverly Hills, Culver City, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach.