Southern California has many underrated sea cliffs and hiking trails up and down the coast, but one cliffside attraction that’s popular with visitors is a hazardous former neighborhood in San Pedro that collapsed into the Pacific Ocean in the 1920s. Between Rancho Palos Verdes and Long Beach was once the thriving cliffside neighborhood of Point Fermin, which consisted of over 30 homes. The coastal area is now known as Sunken City and has been off-limits for decades, yet explorers still find a way into this ghost town.
The story of Sunken City started in 1929 when a water line was damaged under the Ocean View Inn hotel on January 2. This was followed by a broken gas line and landslides that caused 40-foot drops on the surface of the land. In April, heavy rainfall caused a crack in the terrain under 10 homes. Property owners complained about the cracks, but engineers at the time didn’t have any cause for concern due to unchanged developments in land movements. A small earthquake in July tipped the neighborhood even more over the edge, and eventually, residents began to evacuate — many taking their homes with them. Almost all the wood-frame houses were relocated, while two drifted into their graveyards under the ocean.
Evidence shows that Point Fermin moved 11 inches per day, eventually sending 40,000 square feet of land into the Pacific. In 1935, the harbor district engineer asserted that the land had stopped moving, but in 1940, the Los Angeles City engineer feared another landslide was coming. That year, seven houses were occupied in the neighborhood, but the area has remained uninhabitable ever since. The once-residential community has now become known as the “Atlantis of California” for its homes, roads, sidewalks, commercial buildings, and rail tracks forever lost to the Pacific Ocean.
What you need to know about access to California’s Sunken City
The impeccable views and historical fascination of San Pedro’s abandoned Sunken City make it a sought-after destination, however, public access is forbidden. Sunken City Watch, a group dedicated to re-opening the site, claim the land has been safe for years and have urged the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks to grant public access. But concerns over multiple deaths and injuries over the years, as well as eroding coastlines nearby, have been the argument for its continued closure. The 2011 landslides in nearby Paseo Del Mar and the ongoing sliding homes in Rancho Palos Verdes pose too much of a risk for Sunken City to open…