The California Incline, a steeply angled road connecting Ocean Avenue to the Pacific Coast Highway, was first built in 1905. In the mid-1930s, construction on PCH meant that the Incline got an upgrade by widening the road and adding a concrete balustrade. This 1934 shows it getting its makeover. The 1930s was the time of big, fancy beach clubs and we can see two of them in this photo. The one with the turret is Deauville Beach Club and the one farther along is the Santa Monica Athletic Club.
** UPDATE ** – I haven’t been able to verify this, but Lawson D. says: “Not the California Incline, pic above is about a quarter mile south. The Incline pictured above is a fraction of the size of the California Incline, too. This is next to the pier, closer to Colorado Ave.”
** UPDATE #2 ** – Mark S (see comments) says: “Most definitely just outside Santa Monica’s McClure Tunnel as PCH was being expanded circa 1930.”
The beach clubs are long gone, but the California Incline is still very much a part of Santa Monica’s roads. This image is from December 2022.
This is one of those things that I think confuses everybody. Early auto-era images show an incline at the north end of the pallisades which only ran down half way and bent back up again with some kind of turnout space in the middle. It might have been about where the old wooden staircase was located. Sort of like a tourist gimmick. The road that reached the shoreline level, starting from the southern end of the park, seems to have a different history. The pallisades was cut back away from the location of the rail line, probably more than twice over, creating room for roads even as the sand beaches were increased outward.
I should have said further south in the park, not the actual southern end. It may well be that the south leg was projected farther downward later on, while the northerly portion was simply eliminated. The small and narrow trace of that end is just gone from later images.
The incline would touch bottom far down the road closer to one of those buildings cut into the cliffs on the right hand side. So this would be at about the tunnel area where the rail line to Long Wharf came out and was by this point replaced with roadway. The Sunset Trail was near where the wooden overpass went in (replaced by concrete arch version). The the incline itself was well beyond that. [Some sites confuse those two.]
When you’re wrong, it’s best to admit it. I retract the statement about the incline not reaching the beach level in the early days. Going back to find the image that had decieved me, I discovered that a number of photos found on Calisphere were actually reverse prints. This made the wide south approach appear in place of the narrow north trail giving the impression that cars could navigate from there…completely wrong. Not surprisingly, the original source of the photos was U.S.C., as I had previously contacted them to get a correction of a reversed image of the Playa del Rey lagoon (which they did quickly take care of). So, for now, beware of this potential problem as many of these uncorrected images may still exist online.
The top photo, in B&W, is most definitely just outside Santa Monica’s McClure Tunnel as PCH was being expanded c1930; Also, to show this point, the Deauville was at 1525 Ocean Front Boulevard, Santa Monica.
Thanks for that clarification, Mark.