Actors, bandits, priests and one English bulldog: The names behind L.A. beaches

It’s easy to see how Hermosa Beach got its name. Let the Beach Boys be your guides: Of all the surfing spots they name in the board-bouncin’ song “Surfin’ USA,” all but two are beaches in California, and four are in Los Angeles County. The Santa Monica History Museum says the beach was, before World War II, an early gay-friendly spot that its patrons sometimes whimsically called “Ginger Rogers Beach.” Dan Blocker Beach Dan Blocker Beach was a gift to the state by the “Bonanza” TV series star’s fellow actors Lorne Greene and Michael Landon, in Blocker’s memory. Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker’s book “The Beach, the History of Paradise on Earth” notes that inland L.A. families started coming to the beach at Santa Monica Canyon 150 years ago, pitching tents overnight “to justify the dusty two-day trip from downtown L.A.” In time, entrepreneurs set up bigger tents, brought in pianos for merry-making and “good, clean, cheap fun, even on Saturday nights, when the stevedores, oil drillers, and sailors wandered in from Santa Monica …” These delights were not for everyone. A Stanford University study from 2005 concluded that “with few exceptions, Southern California’s public beaches were off limits to blacks and other people of color throughout much of the twentieth century.” Restrictive real estate covenants for beachfront property kept people of color from owning the land, and even if they worked for white property owners as servants, the covenants often dictated that “said employee shall not be permitted upon the beach part of said lands for bathing, fishing or recreational purposes.” Is it any wonder that to this day there are kids of color born and raised here who have never wet their feet in the Pacific Ocean?