Until I came across this aerial photo of Marina Del Ray, I’d never heard of a development called Silver Strand, which is what we are looking at here. It’s only 10 blocks long and 2 blocks wide, and stretches from Washington Blvd down to Via Marina alongside the Main Channel. It started out as a subdivision in 1906 by Abbot Kinney, who was the brains behind Venice, which is the beach directly north. This photo was taken on February 4, 1959, by which time oil was discovered along the coastline. As we can see, there were some houses in the area, but nothing like the primo real estate it is these days.
This is roughly how that view looked in January 2024
I remember getting lost there once years ago. Funny how you can live in an area all your life and completely miss little pockets like this.
As far as I can tell, the lower arch bridge in the first image is from that 1904 era and became at or near the north bank of Ballona Creek when it was channelized and extended across the marsh lands in the 1920’s. (Concrete walls came around 1938.) The strand was then cut off from Playa Del Rey where the southern lagoon was reduced in size, but bridge connections were left for crossings. With the new Marina entry channel, the land spit was further reduced back to around that last wooden bridge in the image. So all that portion was wiped out and the entire beach was completely severed from it’s southern neighbors. Ballona Creek still retained a bridge crossing that allowed one to access the marina district along the north bank but it is a long walk to get all the way around to the ocean side now. Probably best to just stay in Playa del Rey and grab lunch at The Shack!