“Athletic Club, Hearst Want Topanga Yacht Harbor”
by Pablo Capra
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| Topanga Lagoon, 1925 (pic: c/o Marc Wanamaker, Bison Archives) |
In September 1924, the Los Angeles Athletic Club bought 1,800 acres of beach property from the Title Insurance and Trust Company with the intention of building a Topanga Yacht Harbor, a beach club, and subdividing the rest of the land among themselves. The sale was facilitated by members General Moses Sherman (1853-1932) and Eli P. Clark (1847-1931), both instrumental in creating the Hollywoodland development one year earlier.
Hearst kept his intentions secret, but he was said to be “heavily interested” in the Topanga Yacht Harbor project, which was actually planned to be below Parker Mesa. He was working with LAAC Vice President Frank A. Garbutt (1869-1947), who’d come up with the idea. Garbutt owned one of the first major yachts in Southern California, the 90-foot Skidbladnir, which he’d named after a magical ship in Norse mythology.
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| Proposed Topanga Yacht Harbor, c/o Los Angeles Times, 1925-10-04 |
Hearst is blamed for giving out five-year land leases, allowing residents to become more established, and newcomers to build more homes. The LAAC reluctantly became landlords, which presented an obstacle to their development plans.
Hearst also bought property in Tuna Canyon, which was rumored to be for a movie studio. Other rumors that Tuna Canyon was the first proposed site for Hearst Castle ring false, since he’d already started building his castle in 1919.
Around this time, LAAC President William May Garland (1866-1948) accomplished his goal of getting Los Angeles selected as the host for the 1932 Summer Olympics.
The LAAC’s attention suddenly shifted away from constructing the Topanga Yacht Harbor to preparing for the Olympics, while completing other projects already underway like the Maple Ranch Gun Club near Bakersfield (1925), the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades (1927), and acquiring the Pacific Coast Club in Long Beach for another yacht harbor (1928).
The LAAC had hoped to increase their Topanga property’s value by operating the only yacht harbor in the bay, but were disappointed when Santa Monica began planning its own harbor by the Pier in 1926, and eventually built it in 1934.
Also in 1926, the widowed Rhoda May Rindge (1864-1941) began losing the fight to keep her Malibu Ranch private when the State seized part of her land to build Roosevelt Highway. In 1927, the Malibu Colony was the first part of the ranch to open to the public, taking away from Topanga Beach’s allure as the end of the road.
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More houses were built after Hearst offered five-year leases. Photo c/o Randy Young / Tegner collection. |
The LAAC loved polo, building no less than four polo fields at Riviera. In November 1929, they started building one at Topanga Beach too, presumably on Shady Lane, where the prison camp had been.
That same month, their California Yacht Clubhouse in San Pedro burned down. Attention again shifted away from Topanga developments. The Great Depression, which had started one month earlier, would further limit the LAAC’s spending.
The LAAC’s proudest moment came when all their planning for the Olympics was rewarded with 49 medals, including a gold in yacht racing. This was a huge boost to the US, which won the Olympics with 103 medals total. By comparison, Italy came second with 36 medals.
Amazingly, the unforeseen delays to building a Topanga Yacht Harbor, which the LAAC encountered from the start, continued for 77 years. During that time, they were constantly trying to evict the tenants, and pursue their original plan or other developments… and if there had been one less obstacle, they probably would have succeeded. After the Great Depression, it was World War II. And by the 1950s, the residents were so deeply rooted that they sued the LAAC to stay another 15 years. As a result, Topanga Beach remained in limbo until State Parks bought it in 1971 (and made it public in 1979) to block future developments.
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This is an excerpt from the book Topanga Beach: A History, 1820s-1920s. Author Pablo Capra is a former Lower Topanga resident, and continues to preserve the history of that neighborhood on his website, www.brasstackspress.com, and as a board member of the Topanga Historical Society, www.topangahistoricalsociety.org.
