Why you should experience Hermosa Beach Pier in Los Angeles, California.
Hermosa Beach Pier is a streamlined ocean pier where Hermosa Beach's surf culture meets an uninterrupted Pacific walkway, open-water fishing and a 1,140-foot projection into Santa Monica Bay.
Set at the western end of Pier Avenue near The Strand and just steps from Noble Park, the pier occupies the central axis of Hermosa Beach's waterfront, extending directly from the pedestrianized Pier Plaza across the broad sand and into the Pacific. The present reinforced-concrete structure maintains a deliberately spare physical form, with an open deck, regularly spaced light standards and railings that preserve long lateral views across the shoreline. Its length carries the walkway well beyond the surf zone, shifting the outlook from the dense beachfront grid toward Santa Monica Bay, the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the neighboring South Bay coast. Fishing remains integrated into the outer deck, preserving a direct connection between the municipal structure and the marine setting beneath it without enclosing the terminus in commercial buildings. The result is an unusually direct piece of waterfront architecture whose long concrete deck, unobstructed perimeter and deep extension over the Pacific place the ocean itself at the center of Hermosa Beach's public shoreline.
What you should know about Hermosa Beach Pier.
Hermosa Beach Pier is best known for anchoring a succession of municipal piers whose history reaches to the formative years of Hermosa Beach itself. The Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company built the first pier in 1904, three years before the city's incorporation, using timber for both the deck and pilings. A storm destroyed that structure in 1913, clearing the way for a substantially more ambitious concrete replacement completed in 1914. The second pier incorporated an asphalt-paved deck and small red-tiled pagodas that provided shade along its length, giving the waterfront structure an architectural character absent from its wooden predecessor. A Spanish-style gateway later occupied the landward entrance, with two tiled-roof buildings joined by a breezeway above the pier approach. The complex accommodated the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce, Public Library, Los Angeles County Lifeguards and Hermosa Beach Surfing Club, concentrating several civic functions at the waterfront. Deterioration eventually became severe enough for the city to order the old structure demolished in 1961. The city also purchased the adjacent Ocean Aquarium, an attraction begun in 1947 with a $250,000 investment, to clear additional space for a new municipal pier. Construction produced the present pier in 1965, giving Hermosa Beach a third principal structure across little more than six decades of waterfront development.
The pier acquired another layer of local significance through surfing, public commemoration and popular culture. Hermosa Beach created the Surfers Walk of Fame in 2003, embedding bronze plaques at the pier to honor people connected with South Bay surfing. The inaugural group joined seven charter members with sixteen pioneers, placing board shapers, competitors, photographers and other influential figures directly into the public pavement. Annual inductions subsequently expanded the group, and the city marked the twentieth annual celebration in 2024 before recognizing five more figures in 2026: Laurie Wilson, Lonnie Argabright, Tyler Hatzikian, Pat Rawson and John Van Hamersveld. Cinema added another association when Damien Chazelle used the pier for La La Land, with Ryan Gosling performing “City of Stars” during Sebastian's nighttime walk above the Pacific. The structure has simultaneously required substantial physical renewal in its marine environment, including an early-2000s renovation and further concrete-pile, electrical and structural repairs undertaken in 2023. Surf commemoration, cinema and repeated engineering work have given the 1965 pier a cultural life extending far beyond its original municipal function.
How to fold Hermosa Beach Pier into your trip.
Hermosa Beach Pier works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing the city's jazz history, postwar surfboard innovation and preservation of its early civic architecture.
Begin at Lighthouse Cafe, where bassist Howard Rumsey persuaded owner John Levine to permit a Sunday jazz session in 1949 and developed the club into one of the principal centers of West Coast jazz. Rumsey had played with Stan Kenton before settling in Hermosa Beach, and the Lighthouse All-Stars later included musicians such as Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper, Shelly Manne, Milt Bernhart and Frank Patchen. The group produced nine albums, and the club drew figures including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Chet Baker into a small room only steps from the beach, giving Hermosa Beach an international musical association during the postwar decades. Continue to Hermosa Beach Museum, housed inside the former Pier Avenue School complex and devoted to the city's local history. The Hermosa Beach Historical Society formed in 1987 after photographs and historical objects had been kept in private garages and closets, then expanded into museum space inside the old school. Its surfing history reaches into the South Bay shaping culture led by Dale Velzy, who worked with Hap Jacobs in Hermosa Beach and developed the influential “Pig” board during the 1950s. Greg Noll emerged from the same circle, became a major big-wave surfer and filmmaker, and used the Pier Avenue Auditorium for screenings that helped make surf films a local cultural event. Conclude at Hermosa Beach Community Center, whose architecture preserves the civic afterlife of the Pier Avenue School. The original 1911 school suffered devastating damage in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, prompting reconstruction as an Art Deco complex under Hermosa resident Samuel E. Lunden, an architect whose other work included the Pacific Stock Exchange and USC's Doheny Memorial Library. The school closed in 1975, and Brian De Palma subsequently used portions of the vacant complex for Carrie, including the girls' shower and upstairs gym. Hermosa Beach acquired the property, converted it into the Community Center and completed major auditorium work in 1984, earning recognition for preservation of the Art Deco character. The progression moves from Rumsey's postwar jazz scene through the surfboard makers and filmmakers preserved at the museum and culminates in Lunden's repurposed school, connecting three cultural strands that developed within a short walk of the pier.
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