Newport was the original surf city

You’d think Surf City invented surfing. No way. When Surf City

consisted of a few miles of oil wells and a saltwater plunge, there

was surfing in Newport Beach.

One day in the early 1920s, Duke Kahanamoku, world-famous Hawaiian

royalty, Olympic swimming champion and currently a movie star, was

driving along the coast and saw a long sandbar that reached out from

what is now the main beach at Corona del Mar.

He made note of the beautiful surf that built up on that sandbar

and when the Corona del Mar bath house was built in 1924, the Duke

and some of his more muscular friends -- they had to be muscular to

handle those 250-pound mahogany boards -- began surfing at Corona del

Mar and leaving their boards at the bath house.

I know all this because in 1927, when I worked at the bath house,

the Duke would take me for a ride on his shoulders as thanks for

taking care of his board. Soon, some of the local men joined the Duke

and by 1928 when the concrete jetty was completed, quite a few locals

were surfing the break at Corona del Mar.

And still, Surf City consisted of a few miles of oil wells and a

saltwater plunge.

In 1935, they dredged out most of the mud flats in what is now

Newport Harbor. In doing so, a lot of sand was deposited at the end

of the Balboa Peninsula, which created a bodysurfing beach known all

over the world as the Wedge.

And what was Surf City doing all this time?

Well, it still had the oil wells but got rid of the saltwater

plunge. Rumor has it that when the plunge was drained, they found the

body of an oil field worker. He had been there quite a while, but the

water was so salty that he just cured instead of decaying. I don’t

vouch for the truth of the yarn; I just repeat it.

Over the years, the Wedge has produced a group of superlative

bodysurfers. One time, the Newport Beach Bodysurfing Club put on a

bodysurfing contest with surfers from as far away as Santa Cruz and

San Diego. When the contest was over, Wedge regulars had taken first,

second, third and fourth in both the senior and junior divisions.

They never had the contest again.

Speaking of bodysurfing contests, a local woman, Sonja Betsch, is

a three-time women’s champion in the granddaddy of all bodysurfing

contests, Oceanside.

We have a two-time men’s champion on our lifeguard force, and any

day with decent surf you will find as good a group of surfers surfing

between the groins and RJs as you will find anywhere.

So, go ahead and call yourself Surf City because of that big

contest you hold each year. Just remember that we were here first --

and you don’t have a corner on good surfers.

* ROBERT GARDNER was a Corona del Mar resident and former judge.