Above photos graciously provided from the archives of Brian Chip

Malibu Surfrider Beach in the early 1950's from the Michael Christopher Cody Collection

Pat Rawson back in the day...       
1971- D&W Jetty, Playa Del Rey, CA: myself at 17 yrs old riding surfing with full wetsuits, gloves and booties! (that was the “look” then!!).  The white opaque board I was riding was a Tom Overlin. (who was my “surfing & shaping mentor” back then) A 6’2 x 20.5 x 2.8 round tailed twin fin...a “magic” board to ride while I was busy shaping boards for myself, and my growing clientele in Del Rey. That same year, LAX made my parents a nice offer to sell them our house I grew up in, and they took away our great neighborhood!!  Whenever I fly out of LAX and look down, I can still see all our old streets and pick out the concrete foundation of our old house a block away from D&W.  photo credit- Craig (“captain”) Peterson

Special thanks to KS Films Kurt Schaefer for this great footage

​PDR Beach History

Playa del Rey, Spanish for “Beach of the King” or “King’s Beach”, is a beachside community within the city of Los Angeles.
The northern part was originally wetlands, but the natural flooding was halted by the concrete channel which contains Ballona Creek. Before 1824, the harbor was the mouth of the Los Angeles River, before its course shifted to its current outlet at San Pedro.

In the 1870s, Playa Del Rey was the location of the first attempt at a dredged harbor in Santa Monica Bay. Under contract with the Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, Moye Wicks’ syndicate spent $300,000 to dredge “Ballona Harbor”, for shipping to the Orient. Within three years, winter waves brought flooding, but what remained of man’s early efforts became the Playa Del Rey Lagoon, now a regional public park.
Development of Playa del Rey surged in 1928 with the building of the Del Rey Hills neighborhood in what is now the southern part of the community and move of then Loyola University to nearby Westchester. The area was the last stretch of coastal land in the city of Los Angeles to be developed.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Playa del Rey was known as a great Los Angeles area “surfing spot.” But due to the many rock jetties that were built to prevent beach erosion, the good surf is mostly gone. The beach at the northernmost end of Playa del Rey is still known as “Toes Over Beach”, “Toes Beach” or just “Toes” by the local surfing community, a name derived from the toes over or Hang Ten surfing maneuver.
A large portion of Playa del Rey is now vacant, and homes were destroyed after the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) brought increased flight traffic. The noise from the flights made it less desirable to live on the dunes above the ocean under the LAX flight path. LAX bought the southern section of Playa del Rey under the power of eminent domain, eventually numbering 4,400 homes. Today one can see only barbed-wire fences protecting vacant land and old streets where houses once sat.
Locals refer to the small area of housing south of Culver Boulevard and closest to the beach as The Jungle, a nickname given to a group of closely-built apartments built in 1956, within the bounding streets Trolley Place and Trolleyway Street on its east and west respectively, and including the streets Fowling, Rees, Sunridge and Surf. The small sidewalks between homes have deep green overgrowth, which added to the name.
Recent LAX rejuvenation plans call for the city to finally remove the old streets that still line the empty neighborhood once known as Palisades del Rey. The condemned areas of the community are now a protected habitat of the endangered El Segundo blue butterfly.
Despitr this history, the vast majority of land in Playa del Rey continues to be zoned for residential purposes only. Only portions of Manchester Blvd, Pershing Drive and Culver Blvd have businesses—mainly restaurants—and offices mixed in with residential buildings.

If you have any cool PDR surf photos or historical information, we'd be happy to keep these memories alive forever and share them. Please e-mail PDR Mike any content with name if you would like credit for providing.