This photo from 1888, we’re looking south along the bluffs of Santa Monica Beach. To be honest, I’m surprised to see so many beach huts filling the shoreline (I assume that’s what they were, and that people owned them?), especially seeing as how the whole population of Los Angeles hadn’t yet reached 50,000 people. Those bluffs are almost vertical so I’m sure the locals sure appreciated those stairs, but I wonder how rickety they became buffeted by the weather like that. Ditto the pier we can see in the background.
Looking south along the bluffs of Santa Monica Beach, California, 1888
I think this is a southward view, unless the image is reversed, because the ocean is to the right and it is west of the shore.
Yes, you’re quite right. My bad!
Looking south.
In this shot Southern Pacific has not yet built the rail line up from the canyon by the Hotel Arcadia to the Long Wharf site. So that wharf might be what remained of the old railroad extension to serve ships…I’m not sure of this though. Those shacks might be sitting where the highway runs through now as the beach was altered over time and filled in pushing the water outward. And those bluffs were cut into so it all is probably further out then than it is now.