On July 3, 2016, the San Diego Union Tribune (
visit link) ran the following story:
"A HALF CENTURY FOR OCEAN BEACH PIER CELEBRATED...
By Peter Rowe | midnight July 3, 2016 | Updated, 8:05 a.m.
Clear skies, warm sun, cool breezes, surfable waves. Saturday in Ocean Beach could have been called peerless, except for one thing.
The longest concrete pier on the West Coast was celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Saturday's festivities on the 1,971-foot Ocean Beach Pier were pure, saltwater-drenched Americana. The Ocean Beach MainStreet Association peddled commemorative pins ($8), coins ($10), T-shirts ($20). Visitors lined up to have OB Pier postcards stamped with a pictorial cancellation or examine displays on this landmark's history.
Assemblywoman Toni Atkins spoke: "When we talk about California Dreamin', Ocean Beach is the place that comes to mind."
Two octogenarians instrumental in building the pier, Leonard Teyssier and Chuck Bahde, signed autographs and remembered their hard-fought triumph.
"We had to design our own tools," said Teyssier, 88, the general contractor on the job. "We had to deal with rising and falling tides and constant waves."
They also had to fight public opinion.
"There were objections at the Ocean Beach Town Council," said Bahde, who led a pro-pier Chamber of Commerce committee in the 1960s. "Some people were afraid of traffic, of more people coming in. They wanted to keep Ocean Beach exactly as it was."
For all the hoopla, most of Saturday was passed in typically laid-back Ocean Beach fashion. Families strolled on the pier's avenue-wide surface, anglers cast lines into the sea, customers devoured the Captain's Platter at the pier's diner.
Others just ate up the view. "I like it because of the way it's shaped, the way it looks," said Armando Contreras, 49, shooting photos of tall pilings marching westward into the deep.
From vision to reality, this landmark's journey was long and stormy. Another fishing pier planned for the foot of Del Monte Avenue was an early casualty of World War II. The steel pier was only 200 feet into the water when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Overnight, the War Department had other plans for steel.
Carl Schroder, the local resident behind that pier, held onto his dream. In the 1960s, he enlisted Bahde in the cause. They lobbied City Hall, Sacramento and Washington. They sought donations from friends, neighbors, strangers.
The pier was an engineering, as well as financial, challenge. Teyssier noted that there are two pilings every 30 feet, and each is sunk 12 feet into the bedrock below the ocean floor. In winter 1965, a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Japan raced across the Pacific, slamming into the uncompleted pier.
"We almost lost the crane in the water," Teyssier recalled, "but not quite."
The tsunami accounts for the pier's unusual surface, which dips toward the middle before rising at the far end. The violent waves had swept away an undersea layer of gravel. "So that meant we were working in deeper water," Teyssier said.
Nature's challenges continue. In 1991, heavy weather led to $2 million in repairs. During winter storms in 2002, skyscraper-sized waves crashed over the pier, shoving the diner's kitchen wall three feet into the galley.
Yet the pier endures, to the delight of many. Weather permitting, 82-year-old Gail Harrington walks the entire span daily. The views and the fresh air are always invigorating, but Saturday's constitutional was even better.
On the pier, Harrington met one of her heroes.
"God bless you," she told Teyssier. "You did a great job."
peter.rowe@sduniontribune.com
Ocean Beach's peerless pier
Opened: July 2, 1966
Length: 1,971 feet, the West Coast's second-longest pier and longest concrete pier. (Santa Cruz's wooden pier is 2,745 feet.)
Original cost: An estimated $2.5 million
Visitors: More than 500,000 a year
First fish caught from pier: An 8-inch perch
Fish most often caught from pier: Herring"