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SURFERMAG ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

The Hollister family did not want the highway, and they won. The Rindge family did not want the highway, and they lost. As the State of California and the Federal Government tried to manifest their destiny across the Rancho Malibu fence lines, Rhoda May Rindge fought the battle for 30 years, going to the Supreme Court four times, but her land was the victim of its location. On a day in 1926, the Army Corps of Engineers began landscaping the Roosevelt Highway as Rhoda Rindge asked, “…can’t they see they are killing the Malibu.” The huge legal bills May Rindge to begin leasing, then selling property at La Costa and the mouth of Malibu Creek to movie stars. The land to the west of the Malibu Lagoon became the "Malibu Movie Colony." The Roosevelt Highway became Pacific Coast Highway. Whenever brushfires scour the hillsides and destroy houses, or mudslides close P.C.H. way today, locals call it simply: "Rindge's revenge".

Significant Moments in History:

• Tom Blake and Sam Reid were the first to surf Malibu, in 1926: "Visualize, if you can, a beautiful September day in California,” said Sam Reid. “ On this day, the first wave was ridden at what was then Malibu Ranch, stretching from Las Flores Canyon to Oxnard, and owned by Samuel K. Rhindge. The coast highway was then a two lane road, dirt most of the way. Tom Blake had stopped by the Santa Monica Swimming Club to pick me up. In those days, cowboys with guns and rifles still rode the Malibu Ranch, and the gate at Las Flores Canyon had a 'Forbidden -- No Trespassing' sign on it. We took our 10' redwoods out of the Essex rumble seat and paddled the mile to a beautiful white crescent-shaped beach that didn't have a foot print on it. No buildings and, of course, no pier! There was no audience but the seagulls."

Tom Blake recalled that, "the Malibu Ranch had recently opened-up. Sam and I drove up there. The road was black topped. I had previously noted surf there. The day we arrived, the waves were about 3' high. The area was deserted except for seagulls and pelicans and the Rhindge house. To be the first to ride it, I caught a 3-foot wave. We played around in it for an hour or so. Real exclusive riding." The boards ridden that day were of varnished solid California redwood. A rockerless plank, Reid's board dimensions were 10' 1" x 22". The nose was later laminated with post World War II fiberglass and is on display at the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum. By the following year, additional surfers were joining in what Malibu had to offer. “In 1927,” confirmed Charles “Chuck A Luck” Ehlers, “Dilly Perrine and Spud Moorman head about surfing at Malibu. We three rode in a rumble seat car with 3 boards sticking out. We met Tom Blake and Cliff Tucker from Redondo while in Malibu riding perfect, long right slides on glassy water with very shark peaks. We left early, for it was a narrow road and a long way to home." Thereafter -- and documented in Doc Ball's Early California Surfriders printed in 1946 -- surfers periodically surfed Malibu, even during the era when San Onofre was Mainland surfing's Number One spot.

• In 1947, Tommy Zahn asked Joe Quigg to shape a surfboard that Zahn’s girlfriend, Darrilyn Zanuck, could handle and put in the back of her Town and Country convertible. Quigg whittled down an 11-foot plank into a lighter Easy Rider nine-footer. Darrilyn barely got a chance to ride the board as Quigg and Matt Kivlin and Tommy Zahn and others discovered how easily the board turned. That “Darrilyn” board is considered by many to be the Eve of the modern shortboard.

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