This is a great 8 minute look at the history of competitive surfing at the Huntington Beach Pier. But surfing in Huntington Beach actually goes back to 1914 with George Freeth, one of the Hawaiian surfers that brought back "The Sport of Kings."
Riding waves on wooden boards goes back hundreds of years in Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands, as they were called by haoles when first discovered. But when the white settlers started colonizing the islands, they didn't catch the surf stoke, and did what they could to ban the sport. Surfing was all but dead in the later half of the 1800's. A small group of watermen in Waikiki, around 1900, started bringing the ancient sport back. A half Irish, half Hawaiian named George Freeth was the leader of the crew, among them a young man a few years younger than George, Duke Kahahamoku.
In about 1907-08, writer Jack London, best known for his novels about the Klondike gold rush, like The Call of the Wild, and White Fang, traveled to Hawaii. Walking out on the beach in Waikiki, London saw some men who appeared to be "walking on water." He kept watching, and realized they were riding the waves on long boards. London was fascinated by this activity, and got to know them and learn about their life as surfers, swimmers, and divers. When he went back to the mainland, London wrote an article about surfing for a U.S. women's magazine.
That article was read by the wife of Southern Californian railroad magnate Henry Huntington, among many others. At the time, Huntington had run a railroad arm down to Redondo Beach from Los Angeles, and was having a pier built, and developing the land there. The Huntingtons traveled to Hawaii soon after, and met George Freeth and his crew of surfers in Waikiki. Henry Huntington hired Freeth to come to California to do diving and surfing demonstrations at the Redondo Beach Pier to help promote the development and sell houses there.
In the years that followed, George began to surf other breaks as well around southern California. Along the way, George invented the idea of lifeguards at beaches, and the lifeguard "can" or buoy, used to help bring tired swimmers to shore. He helped train the first lifeguards at SoCal beaches.
Meanwhile, farther south in Orange County, some developers had started a small community called Pacific City, which was supposed to be the Atlantic City of the West Coast. But they had trouble attracting people to the small town, surrounded by lima bean fields. The Pacific City developers decided to talk Henry Huntington into building a railroad trolley line from Long Beach to Pacific City, to make it much easier to visit. To seal the deal, they changed the name of Pacific City to Huntington Beach in the railroad man's honor. It worked. And in 1914, when a new pier was dedicated in Huntington Beach, George Freeth gave the very first surfing demo at the Huntington Beach Pier. The wave riding tradition that would turn Huntington Beach into "Surf City" had begun. Unfortunately, George Freeth died in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1917-1919, getting sick after a daring rescue.
Duke Kahanamoku, in the same time period, had become a champion Olympic swimmer, and began to promote surfing around California, and later all around the world. From the 1910's until his death in 1968, he promoted surfing, and spread the stoke worldwide, becoming the Father of Modern Surfing.
In 1920, oil was discovered in Huntington Beach, and it turned into a somewhat rowdy oil town. In a weird quirk of fate, as other cities around it got developed in the next few decades, including houses built right on the beach, Huntington Beach lagged behind. Because of this, it became the less expensive, more working class beach city in Orange County. The oil wells, crazy as it sounds, kept the 8.3 miles of beach from getting developed, leaving H.B. with the best beach for local beach goers in SoCal. The consistent, if not huge, beach break waves, and the less expensive rent, attracted plenty of surfers. When the surfing, surf music, and "beach blanket" surf movies exploded in popularity in the early 1960's, Huntington Beach became known worldwide as Surf City. That led to the explosion of surfing culture, and great competitions documented in the video above.
In August of each year, the U.S. Open of Surfing, the successor to the OP Pro contests of the 1980's-1990's, draws crowds of 100,000 or more people, and the best surfers on Earth. A statue of Duke Kahanamoku now stands in front of Huntington Surf & Sport, surrounded by hand prints and foot prints in cement of the top surfers of recent decades.
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