Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182 pp., 1920s
12 State Beach
"The beach at the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon . . . known as "State Beach" . . . helped set the pattern for the mythical Southern California beach culture.
"In the mid-1920s a string of newly built beach clubs lined the strand below the Santa Monica bluffs and gave the city's resort status a bright new lustre. As a safety measure for members, the first lifeguards in Santa Monica were hired by the clubs, including the Santa Monica Swimming Club, located just southeast of Santa Monica Canyon. It was here that the legendary Sam Reid and Tom Blake not only served as lifeguards, but developed their surfing skills. . .
"Surfing was introduced to the California coast in 1907, when George Freeth, who was born and raised in Hawaii, was brought by railroad magnate Henry Huntington to Redondo Beach as an attraction for his new plunge . . . He performed twice a day for tourists. He became the first official lifeguard in the Santa Monica Bay area, assembled the first volunteer lifesaving corps in Southern Californa, and developed a cigar-shaped metal rescue kit which he mounted on a motorcycle sidecar.
"The twin sports of body-surfing and board-surfing also arrived in Santa Monica in the 1920s. Pioneer surfer Sam Reid discovered board-surfing in Atlantic City in 1912 when, at the age of six, he saw Duke Kahanamoku in an exhibition and borrowed the family ironing board to ride his first wave. Moving to California, he was hired as a lifeguard at the Santa Monica Swimming Club in 1925 . . .
"Tom [Blake] [1902- ], who had moved to the West Coast in 1921 at the age of nineteen, first attained fame when he entered a competition with a board into which he had drilled holes, lightening it . . . He used it to win the 1928 Pacific Coast Paddleboard Championships and thereafter patented a hollow paddleboard design. In 1935 he led the way again by adding a fin to the board for greater stability . . . honored posthumously on the . . . Surfing Walk of Fame at Huntington Beach."