Happy 100th birthday, Pismo Beach Pier! From flappers to fixes, see history of iconic landmark
The 1920s were a time of growth on the Central Coast.
The Pismo Beach Pier will be celebrating a centennial birthday just a few days after San Luis Obispo’s Monday Club also celebrated its own centennial. (The Pier’s actual anniversary was July 4, but the schedule was a bit packed on Independence Day.)
A celebration event will be held Oct. 11 from 3-7 p.m. at the Pier with additional details available at experiencepismobeach.com.
The Pier we know today was originally a private venture, but it has since become a favorite for people who enjoy photography, fishing or a walk over the ocean.
The idea began in the flapper era.
The July 16, 1923, the San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram had a superlative-loaded regional page calling Pismo Beach “the playground of one-fourth of the people of California” and “the second-longest inhabited beach in the world.”
The Telegram loved big promotional phrasing.
Leading the page was the announcement of a corporation selling stock to the tune of $500,000 (about $9 million in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars) to build a pier, private pool plunge, a combined theater and radio concert hall boardwalk and amusement park.
The lead promoter had experience at Manhattan Beach and the World’s Fair in Chicago.
By August the following year, the company was having trouble paying bills, and Albert Schleim filed suit to collect an unpaid bill for $765.
According to the Arroyo Grande Herald, he had contracted to provide blue gum logs for construction pilings.
The centerpiece of the project — the “pleasure pier” — was completed and opened July 4, 1924, at a cost of $150,000. The other projects were scaled back or not built.
But the ocean is a relentless environment and the first reconstruction of the Pier was already required by Feb. 26, 1926, after rough seas swept away 400 feet of the structure at an estimated cost of $25,000.
By May 1929, ownership of the Pier had moved to the Pacific Coast Railway Co.
The PCRR already ran to Harford Pier in Port San Luis, a feeder to an affiliated business, the Pacific Coast Steam Ship Co.
Owning the Pier in Pismo Beach might have been a defensive move to prevent the nearby Southern Pacific Railroad from gaining access to a competing facility.
An earlier wharf had been built in Pismo Beach in 1881, but that one washed away leaving the way clear to Port San Luis to become the destination for shipping on the south coast.
Highway travel in the 1920s and beyond would be a boon for Pismo Beach, but not for the railroads.
By the 1950s, the beach and Pier passed into public ownership, but it had already been a focal point for visitors to Pismo Beach for over a generation.
Though the city never grew into the “Coney Island of the West” as the May 6, 1924, Daily Telegram once called it, the Pier abides the ebb and flow of the Pacific Ocean.
