Sand dunes, mussel beds, picnics.
Ocean Beach’s shoreline has been described in different ways over time, long before it became the coastal community known today.
Ocean Beach today is probably best known for its surf culture, its long concrete pier, and a tightly-knit neighborhood identity. But its earlier history is rooted less in formal place names and more in how people described the landscape: a broad stretch of sand shaped by wind, shifting dunes, and the former course of the San Diego River as it reached the Pacific.
Eric DuVall, president of the Ocean Beach Historical Society, said the earliest widely used reference for the area was likely Los Médanos, Spanish for “the dunes,” reflecting the dominant natural feature of the coastline before development.
“There was a lot of sand, hence the dunes, hence the name Los Médanos,” DuVall said.
He said the area had no widely established formal name before the late 1800s, instead being identified in simple geographic terms tied to the dunes and open shoreline.
That began to change in 1887, when developers William “Billy” Carlson and Frank Higgins subdivided the land and began marketing it as a seaside residential community under the name Ocean Beach.
Early access from downtown San Diego was difficult, and growth remained slow even after the name was introduced, until transportation improvements, such as Charlie Collier’s Point Loma Railroad, were made. The line that came out to Ocean Beach in 1909 was called the OB Loop of the Point Loma Railroad, which helped connect the area more directly to the city, DuVall said.
DuVall also emphasized that there is no historical evidence that the community was ever called “Mussel Beach.” The confusion, he said, likely comes from references to “mussel beds” along the rocky southern edge of the shoreline — an intertidal area now associated with tide pools near and south of the pier.
This 1905 shot is a rare view of Ocean Beach, DuVall said. H.R. Fitch was the photographer for Ralston Realty, which was Charlie Collier’s real estate company. (Photo courtesy of the Ocean Beach Historical Society Collection.)“The mussel beds really only referred to what we now call the tide pools,” he said. “The area was not called that.”
He noted that Ocean Beach’s main shoreline is a wide sandy beach stretching north toward the former mouth of the San Diego River, now the flood control channel. That expanse of sand helped form the dune system that early descriptions like Los Médanos reflected.
In Ruth Varney Held’s Beach Town: Early Days in Ocean Beach, early residents describe the shoreline in informal, lived-in terms tied to recreation and daily use. While later interpretations sometimes refer to “Picnic Beach,” DuVall said this reflects how people used the area rather than an official or widely recognized name.
Held’s account, based on her arrival in Ocean Beach in 1912, remains one of the earliest firsthand historical records of the community and is frequently cited in Ocean Beach Historical Society research.
Although the shoreline has changed significantly through development and shifting sand, its underlying geography remains visible in its broad beach, tidal edge, and remnants of dune structure. Ocean Beach’s history, DuVall said, is ultimately a story of landscape before labels — where description came before development, and the land itself shaped how the community was understood long before it had a formal name.
Read more history stories here, and do you have a story to tell? Send an email to DebbieSklar@cox.net.
Sources:
Eric DuVall, president, Ocean Beach Historical SocietyRuth Varney Held, Beach Town: Early Days in Ocean BeachOcean Beach Historical Society publications (Where Land and Water Meet; Arcadia Publishing, Ocean Beach, 2014)Ocean Beach San Diego History ProjectOcean Beach Planning Board community history
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