INTRODUCTION
What started as one man’s vision in 1887 has become a booming recreational boating utopia. The man was Moye L. Wicks, a real estate speculator. His vision was to transform Playa del Rey’s estuary into a major commercial harbor for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway to support shipping demands for the increased import and export of goods.
With the idea of establishing this area as a commercial harbor for Los Angeles, Wicks organized the Port Ballona Development Company to raise money for developing the area. Within three years, however, the company went bankrupt. The wharf that Wicks’s Port Ballona Development Company built in the early 1900s was destroyed by seasonal heavy rains and flooding. The site, formerly part of the Machado Mexican-Spanish land grant, reverted back to a marshland, rich with ducks, fish, and birds.
The wildlife haven became a recreational playground for duck hunters and fishermen, as well as a destination for location shoots in the burgeoning motion picture industry. Culver City, home since 1918 to movie studios, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was within three miles of the wetlands. Culver City residents picnicked on the estuary banks of the meandering Ballona Creek, whose flooding propensity was finally tamed by concrete revetments built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1938.
Small commercial stores lined the Culver City roads through the farmland to the popular city of Venice, known for its laid-back beaches, vacation cottages, and elaborate canal system once provisioned with gondolas and gondoliers. Wide-ranging entertainment venues, from bathhouses and theaters to coffeehouses and cafés, served alcoholic beverages in the early 1900s when other communities would not. With the discovery of oil in Venice in 1929, the boom was on. Oil wells were limited to two per city block. By 1932, the oil, once offering hope to so many, left the marshland riddled with oily residue attracting mosquitoes, crime, and the need for expensive mosquito-abatement maintenance.
A 1916 study by the Corps of Engineers deemed the Ballona area impractical for a harbor. Following the Great Depression, the harbor idea was reopened for review in 1936 by Congress and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Intensive economic feasibility studies were prepared in 1938 by the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission to develop the area into a recreational harbor, after San Pedro was chosen as the preferred site for the international commercial Port of Los Angeles.
Thus, the vision of Marina del Rey (“Harbor of the King”) for pleasure-boating was born. Plans were set aside due to World War II. In 1949, the Corps of Engineers submitted a plan to Congress outlining the feasibility of constructing a harbor in the Playa del Rey inlet area for up to 8,000 boats, at an estimated cost of $24 million. A revised master plan was given first priority. Prominent county advocates Rex Thomson and Arthur Will pushed for the transformation of the former tidal marsh and oil field into a modern harbor and community.
Financing was obtained in 1953 from the California State tidelands’ oil revenues to purchase much of the harbor site. In 1954, civic leaders and politicians, led by newly elected supervisor Burton W. Chace of the Fourth District, County of Los Angeles, lobbied for funding legislation from the State of California, the City and County of Los Angeles, and the federal government. Later in 1954, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower signed Public Law 780, making the harbor an authorized federal project. Federal, state, city, and county funds were committed, with voters approving a $13 million municipal revenue bond issue in 1956 to raise funds to build the water infrastructure.
In the process of designing and building more effective drainage for the flood control system in 1938, the Corps of Engineers built a concrete channel to contain Ballona Creek, creating a deeper body of water where the present Playa del Rey (Ballona) Lagoon is located. A second body of water, adjacent to what is now Marina del Rey, evolved as a flood-control basin. Known as Lake Los Angeles, Mud Lake, or Lake Venice, it became a recreational hot spot for small sailboats and ski boats in the 1950s, and it offered a glimpse of the future. These boating enthusiasts would later bring their sailing expertise to the new Marina del Rey and organized boating events and yacht clubs.
The marina’s current Marina Beach, known as “Mother’s Beach,” sits on the site of the former Mud Lake in Basin D. Part of the Mud Lake sand area was known as Hoppyland, a carnival site of rides and merry-go-rounds operated by William Boyd, a film star who portrayed the television cowboy Hopalong Cassidy. Adjacent to his amusement park was the Lake Los Angeles Riding Club and Stables, owned and operated by Walter Leroy “Roy” Willette. Hoppyland closed in 1954, and the riding club moved on October 31, 1959.
Ground-breaking ceremonies to begin Marina del Rey’s construction took place on December 11, 1957, at the site of the future opening of the entrance channel, adjacent to the jetties of Ballona Creek. The three remaining oil wells were capped, and the dredging of the modern footprint for the channels began. Soil was moved to mounds, which would ultimately become the land sites (moles) enclosed in concrete walls, with underground utilities readied for future development. Los Angeles citizens watched in awe as the 804-acre harbor took shape.
By November 1958, the jetties for today’s harbor entrance were completed. Each of the eight water basins, A through H, was sequentially dredged. Reinforced concrete bulkhead/headwalls were poured. Pilings were driven to hold docks for boat slips. With the arrival of the first boats in 1962, Marina del Rey was a reality.
In the winter of 1962–1963, severe winter storms brought storm surge directly into the harbor, destroying docks and pilings. News reports repeated the claim that the fury of the Pacific Ocean would defeat the man-made engineering marvel. Land developers were suddenly without financing to build out the dirt moles. Dire forecasts of “Chace’s Folly” or “Chace’s White Elephant” beset the county board of supervisors.
Enter a coterie of businessmen, developers, and elected representatives from county, state, and congressional levels tasked to speed up the research of the Corps of Engineers’ Waterway Experiment Station at Vicksburg, Mississippi, to solve the excessive vulnerability of the harbor to wave action. A permanent detached breakwater was recommended. Civic leaders, government officials, and land developers who firmly believed in the successful economic vision of Marina del Rey sought to raise the additional monies required to build the breakwater.
When interviewed in 2011, Jerry Epstein, the last living original major Marina del Rey land developer (Del Rey Shores), told the Marina del Rey Historical Society that he and Aubrey Austin Jr., president of Santa Monica Bank and chairman of the county’s new Small Craft Harbor Advisory Committee, “hitched an airplane ride from March Air Force Base to Washington, DC. We walked the halls of Congress lobbying for funds to build the breakwater. The county had little lobbying presence in those days.” But with the help of Sen. Clair Engle, Congressman James Roosevelt, and Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, funding was obtained to ferry rocks and boulders from the quarry on Catalina Island to build the breakwater, beginning on October 15, 1963.
Temporary sheet-pile baffles were placed strategically across the entrance channel to give vital protection to the harbor while the detached breakwater was built. In 1965, the breakwater was completed, the baffles were removed, and the permanent existence of Marina del Rey was ensured.
Private developers financed and built everything from multi-residential complexes, hotels, popular restaurants, and nightspots to marine stores and retail businesses, yacht brokerage offices, yacht clubs, banks, medical buildings, and grocery stores. Among the 1962 developments were the Pieces of Eight restaurant and the Sheraton hotel (with its Golden Galleon lounge), later renamed the Marina del Rey Hotel. Joining these would be the Warehouse, Cyrano’s, Fiasco, Donkins Inn, the Randy Tar, Lobster House, Captain’s Wharf, and Don the Beachcomber.
Fisherman’s Village, consisting of Cape Cod–style shops, opened in 1969, featuring traditional tall ship tours, harbor cruises, and an aquarium. Public services were provided to Marina del Rey by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and by the Harbor Patrol, which was later merged into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The nonprofit Marina Foundation, established in 1980, funded the addition of a nautical section to the Marina del Rey County Library to further enhance public access to marine-related resources.
In March 1963, the Pioneer Skippers Boat Owners Association was formed by experienced boat owners who brought their craft from other harbors to be closer to their Los Angeles residences. They organized social activities in the new marina and advised the harbor department on necessary navigational aids, channel markers, dock facility maintenance, as well as other boating issues. The organization founded the renowned Christmas Boat Parade, now Holiday Boat Parade, a continuing winter attraction for hundreds of spectators and participants.
Currently, Marina del Rey has 4,100 boat slips in 21 anchorages. Launch ramp facilities provide marina access for over 100,000 trailer-class boats. Yacht clubs and other social groups continue to promote year-round events and cruises. World-class yacht races, fishing derbies, and boat parades fill much of the boating calendar.
Among the public parks in Marina del Rey are the following: Yvonne Braithwaite Burke Admiralty Park, with its self-guided exercise path for fitness enthusiasts; Aubrey E. Austin Jr. Park, with its benches and spectacular views of the entrance channel; and Harold Edgington Park, honoring an early harbor patrolman.
The l0-acre park and centerpiece of community interaction in Marina del Rey is Burton W. Chace Park at 13650 Mindanao Way, named after the 1954 Los Angeles County supervisor who led the development of Marina del Rey. Notably, the park has a statue called The Helmsman. This statue stood in front of, and was a trademark for, the well-known Helms Bakery on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles for many years. On October 6, 1971, the Helms family generously donated it to the marina, where it has become a Marina del Rey landmark.
Bordered by Playa del Rey to the south and Venice to the north, and located about six miles north of Los Angeles International Airport, Marina del Rey is situated in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County. Today, its population is approximately 10,000 permanent residents. The seasonal day population often exceeds 30,000 people.
Celebrities—from film stars to scientists, artists and authors—have frequented Marina del Rey over the years. Among them were the cast and crew of Baywatch, a popular television series that first aired in 1989, and The Flying Nun, a television sitcom that aired from 1967 to 1970. Another notable was the undersea explorer and inventor Jacques Cousteau, whose aqualung invention enabled divers to study the sea and all its forms of life and to share the ocean’s beauty with the world.
And Marina del Rey is always changing. Plans for future redesign and development are constantly proposed and reviewed, reflecting the needs and demographics of the community. The County of Los Angeles Department of Beaches and Harbors maintains oversight. Future development is reviewed by the California Coastal Commission, Marina del Rey Local Coastal Plan (LCP), and County of Los Angeles Department of Regional Planning. Public hearings are conducted on the projects, amenities, and activities that the public would like to see or not see in the marina. This “Visioning Process” is considered by many to be an extension of the 1938 feasibility study.
Although Marina del Rey opened in 1962, the official dedication was made on April 10, 1965, heralding the resultant success of community action. A unique partnership of public and private enterprise emerged from the purposeful vision to provide Los Angeles citizens with a man-made marina, economically self-sustaining, for recreational boating and other activities. In fact, Marina del Rey has exceeded the economic premise foretold in the 1938 feasibility study and is considered the “Crown Jewel of Los Angeles County.” The marina is the county’s largest money-generating entity, outside of homeowner taxes, creating revenue that benefits all of the county’s residents.
Reflecting the diligent scrutiny maintained by the County of Los Angeles, long-tenured supervisor of the Fourth District Don Knabe, elected in 1996, led the board of supervisors in June 2013 to approve his history-making motion to return a greater portion of the monies generated by marina businesses back to the marina to support infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. Increased dollar allotments and percentage schedules of ongoing funding will ensure that Marina del Rey stays dynamic and up to date with projects that improve the quality of life for residents, boat owners, and visitors alike.
April 10, 2015, will mark the 50th anniversary of Marina del Rey’s official opening. Among the planned celebrations are music, boat rides, community events, and historical reminders to all of the people of Los Angeles that Marina del Rey is for all of them, built for their recreational enjoyment. Its outstanding success as a water-sports mecca, residential haven, and economic resource has created tremendous community pride in this world-class harbor.