Why The Strand matters.
The Strand is a defining beachfront path where Hermosa Beach's coastal character meets continuous ocean access, active recreation and a linear public realm embedded between the Pacific and one of the South Bay's most concentrated residential shorelines.
Set along the Pacific shoreline near Pier Avenue and just steps from Hermosa Beach Pier, the beachfront path occupies the city's entire two-mile ocean edge, with sand opening uninterrupted to the west and houses, walk streets and low-rise development defining its eastern boundary. A broad paved surface runs almost level beside the beach, producing long north-south sightlines punctuated by lifeguard towers, volleyball courts and the pier extending perpendicular to the route. Traveling the path keeps the ocean continuously exposed as successive walk streets connect the waterfront with inland residential blocks, creating frequent lateral openings through an otherwise linear coastal environment. The central section tightens around Pier Plaza and the pier approach before the corridor stretches back into predominantly residential frontage toward both city boundaries. The result is a beachfront route whose uninterrupted geometry turns Hermosa Beach's entire shoreline into a continuous public passage through recreation, residential architecture and Pacific views.
What defines The Strand.
The Strand is best known for a waterfront route whose origins reach directly into Hermosa Beach's creation as a planned seaside community at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company emerged after Sherman and Clark interests acquired 1,500 acres of former Rancho Sausal Redondo land in 1900 for $35 per acre and began preparing the property for development. The first official municipal-area survey followed in 1901 for a boardwalk along with Hermosa Avenue and Santa Fe Avenue, placing the oceanfront route among the settlement's earliest pieces of infrastructure. Construction produced a plank walkway extending the full two-mile shoreline, with 500,000 board feet of Oregon pine used across a substantial portion of the project. Redondo Beach residents derided the early structure as a walk leading nowhere, but the path established a permanent public edge as houses and commercial development gradually filled the former dunes behind it. High tides repeatedly damaged sections of the timber construction, exposing the vulnerability of a walkway positioned directly beside the surf. Concrete replacement began across much of the route in 1914, and the final 2,000 feet at the northern end were completed in cement in 1926. That quarter-century evolution carried the waterfront from a fragile resort-era boardwalk into the durable linear route that still determines how pedestrians and wheeled recreation move along Hermosa Beach.
Municipal ownership gave that physical development an unusually strong public-access foundation. Hermosa Beach incorporated on January 14, 1907 and acquired its two-mile ocean frontage through a deed from the Hermosa Beach Land and Water Company. The conveyance reserved the shore as a beach playground free of commercial development for residents and the wider Southern California public, embedding recreation into the city's legal relationship with its coastline during its first year of incorporation. Hermosa remained primarily a seasonal resort community into the 1920s, making the waterfront route particularly important to the beachgoing population that arrived during warmer months. Successive residential growth subsequently placed cottages and houses directly behind the shore, and a dozen pedestrian walk streets between Hermosa Avenue and the ocean preserved connections through those early subdivisions. A later regional role emerged when the route became the first completed Los Angeles County segment of the California Coastal Trail. The path now continues beyond the municipal boundaries into Manhattan Beach to the north and Redondo Beach to the south, converting the original local boardwalk alignment into part of a much larger coastal circulation system. Hermosa Beach regulates the heavily used corridor with an eight-mile-per-hour limit for permitted wheeled devices and a conditional walk zone between 11th and 14th streets, concentrating additional pedestrian control around its busiest central blocks. More than a century after the original survey, the same oceanfront axis remains both local public space and regional coastal infrastructure.
How The Strand fits.
The Strand works as the anchor for a Hermosa Beach sequence tracing how education, cinema and civic recreation produced enduring institutions as the early resort community matured into a permanent city.
Begin at Hermosa Beach Community Center, whose predecessor Pier Avenue School opened in 1911 before the 1933 Long Beach earthquake damaged the building almost to its foundation. Hermosa resident Samuel Lunden, whose wider career included USC's Doheny Memorial Library and the Pacific Stock Exchange, served as principal architect for its 1934 reconstruction through a Works Progress Administration project that created Pier Avenue Junior High School. Brian De Palma later used the property's girls' shower and upstairs gym during production of Carrie, released in 1976, giving the former school an unexpected place in American film history. Municipal acquisition during the 1970s led to its conversion into a community center supporting arts, theater, recreation and civic programs, and the Hermosa Beach Museum now occupies former instructional spaces inside the historic complex. Continue to Bijou Theatre, opened in 1923 as the Metropolitan Theatre within a Richard D. King-designed building on Hermosa Avenue. West Coast Theatres operated the house during the 1920s, and Fox West Coast Theatres renamed it the Hermosa Theatre in 1938 as movie exhibition became an established part of the city's commercial life. Later conversion into two screens preceded its 1983 Bijou Twin Cinema name, and the auditorium eventually closed before a 1999 redevelopment removed seating and leveled the floor for new commercial use. Local designation preserved the surviving building as one of Hermosa Beach's scarce protected historic resources even after its original theatrical function disappeared. Conclude at Clark Building, constructed in 1934 and named for longtime resident and mayor John Clark. Generations of residents used the municipal building for recreation programs, civic meetings, private functions and community celebrations, making it among the city's durable Depression-era public facilities. A $2.6 million rehabilitation completed in 2025 modernized the property after decades without a comparable intervention and preserved its historic character for continued community use. The progression moves from an earthquake-rebuilt school through a surviving former movie house into a Depression-era civic facility renewed for contemporary use, tracing the educational, entertainment and recreational institutions that accompanied Hermosa Beach's development beyond its early resort years.
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