July 26, 2012 Thursday

Crystal Cove State Park

Today I did what I have I been wanting to do for several years – I stopped at the Crystal Cove State Park to see if the old beach house where my family spent seven summer vacations in the 1950’s was still there. I was travelling from Manhattan Beach to San Clement to visit Greg, my life-long friend. At Long Beach I left the freeway to get on the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) to slowly travel through all the classic surf towns of Southern California. Between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, the densely developed sprawl of houses, strip malls, shops, and stop lights ends and the landscape changes to three miles of open space of dry brush and sandy trails that run up the cliffs above an empty sandy beach. As long as I can remember (1950 onward) this stretch has always been empty. The entire three miles are now part of the Crystal Cove State Park and thus will remain open from now on.

The old beach house was still there; it’s the white one in the above photo. At the south end of the open stretch where the Los Trancos creek empties into the ocean resided a colony of twenty or so beach houses at the base of the bluff on the edge of a pristine sandy beach. Today the houses are in disrepair and closed off to the public. These houses were built in the thirties and each one was different, this was not a development. The family of my dad’s boss, John and Betty McGraw, owned the house. Betty’s father built it in the 1930’s. For seven summers our two families (four McGraws and five Moores) would cram into that small house for one or two weeks of sunshine and fun on the beach. Nine people stuffed into a two-bedroom cabin with a postage stamp of a kitchen. I slept on the bed that they had outside under the covered deck. The top cover was a heavy army surplus canvas tarp, I crawled under it and listened to the crash of the waves all night and would wake up to the dense fog and dampness dripping off of the tarp. For me it was the dream vacation, my love of the ocean began right here. My mother has a picture of me standing at the water’s edge with a fishing pole, which towered over my head, in my hand at age three. A boardwalk ran in front of the houses and ended at a small store. I would run down to the store first thing in the morning to buy the paper for my parents, and in the afternoons we would run back to the store for candy and ice cream.

The beach sloped into the water causing the waves to build up and crash on the water’s edge. To me the waves were huge and really tossed us around. I learned to body surf here. We also got pounded trying the ride the waves on surf mats. Knowing what I know now, some sizeable south swells came through during those summers. I remember clearly that my last summer there I was nine years old – 1954. But kids being kids, going on trips with your parents loses its glow at about age ten, especially when your brothers are four and six years older. The children of both families lost interest and thus the trips to Crystal Cove ended. But I have always had a love for the place and was glad that I had managed to return.

Several years later, I recall my mother mentioning that Betty’s family was forced to give up the house. They tried to fight it but they lost. I looked up the history of the Crystal Cove State Park and here’s what happed:

In 1894 James Irvine Jr. formed the Irvine Company that consisted of 110,000 acres of land stretching from the Santa Anna River to the ocean. The Irvine family first purchased the land from Jose Andres Sepulveda, the original Spanish land grant owner. Early in the 20^th century, the Irvine family generously let ranch employees and friends pitch tents and build temporary shelters on the beach. In the 1920’s, the Hollywood file industry used the cove as a filming location. A  cargo ship carrying lumber capsized nearby and provided residents with building material to erect cottages. In 1927, the little colony of cottages was given the name Crystal Cove. In the 1930’s, the number of cottages grew causing a management problem for the Irvine Company who still owned the land. Towards the end of the 30’s, they notified the residents with cottages that they either had to move them to another location or give up ownership to the Irvine Company. Most owners gave them up and leased them back from the company. This step effectively protected the cottages from sale to private developers, prevented expansion of the cottages beyond their original dimensions and maintained the colony’s 1920s & 30s character. The colony remained this way until the mid-70s when the State of California first expressed interest in acquiring Crystal Cove. Two residents, with the help of family and friend connections, worked very hard to place Crystal Cove on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1979 the State of California purchased the land from the Irvine Company to form the Crystal Cove State Park.

Thus Betty’s family had to give up their great little beach house in 1979. But the state is doing a good job of preserving the area, keeping it away from developers, and opening up a beautiful beach and miles of hiking trails for the general public to enjoy.

Click on the link below to view more pictures, and if you ever get the opportunity, I encourage you to check out Crystal Cove.

Crystal Cove