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Huntington Beach: Surf City USA

Huntington Beach, California, calls itself Surf City USA, and it has the history to back it up: the first surfing demonstration on its pier in 1914, and a summer contest often called the largest surfing competition in the world. Here's how the waves work, where the pier came from, and what to know before you paddle out.

Where it is

Huntington Beach is in Orange County, about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, with 9.5 miles of sandy coastline. It was incorporated in 1909, and the 2020 census counted 198,711 residents, which makes it the most populous beach city in the county. The town, first called Pacific City, took its name from Henry E. Huntington, the railroad magnate whose Red Car lines it was eager to join. An oil boom followed in the 1920s, but surfing is what made it famous.

How the waves work

Huntington is a beach break: the waves break over sandbanks rather than a reef or a rocky point. Sand moves, so the best peaks shift as swells and seasons reshape the bottom. The pier steadies things: swell running through its pilings is gathered and shaped by them, and the sandbanks on either side give the most dependable waves on the beach.

Which side of the pier is better depends on the season. In summer, south swells favor the north side, where the sandbanks known as the Pier Bowl shape a short, wedging right-hander that runs toward the pilings and now and then throws a barrel. When stronger westerly swells arrive, from about November, the south side of the pier comes into its own, though solid west-northwest swells still send good rights into the pier on the north side too. On any side, the cleanest days come with offshore winds from the northeast or east, including the Santa Ana winds of fall.

The pier and its history

The first pier, built of timber in 1904 at the foot of Main Street, ran about 1,000 feet out to sea. A storm in 1910 sent much of it into the Pacific, and the town replaced it with concrete: when the new pier was dedicated in 1914, it was the longest and highest concrete pleasure pier in the United States. For the opening, Henry Huntington, who had seen George Freeth ride waves in Hawaii, hired him to give a surfing demonstration. Freeth, now remembered as the father of modern surfing, became the first person to surf in Huntington Beach. The Hawaiian swimmer and surfer Duke Kahanamoku began surfing there in 1925 and helped spread the sport's popularity.

The pier has been battered and rebuilt again and again. A 1939 tropical storm damaged it badly, and storms in 1983 and January 1988 wrecked it. In July 1988 an engineering study declared it unsafe and it closed. A local group called P.I.E.R. raised more than $100,000, and Huntington Beach's sister city, Anjo in Japan, donated $92,000. The pier was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, construction began in October 1990, and the new pier was dedicated on July 18, 1992. It's designed to stand up to 31-foot waves or a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, and at the city's request its pilings were spaced wider apart to make room for surfers.

Ruby's and the end of the pier

There has long been somewhere to eat at the end of the pier. The End Cafe stood there until the storms of the 1980s. When the pier was rebuilt, Ruby's Diner carried on the tradition, opening at the pier's end in 1993. For nearly 30 years, walking the length of the pier to Ruby's was part of a day at Huntington. The chain's owner had filed for bankruptcy in 2018, and in February 2021 Ruby's on the pier closed for good, with fans lining up for one last meal.

A short-lived seafood pop-up, Bud & Gene's, took over the space in July 2022. Then in August 2023, Broad Street Oyster Company, a seafood restaurant that opened its first permanent location in Malibu in 2019, moved in, keeping the tradition of a meal at the end of the pier alive.

The US Open of Surfing

Every summer, the beach on the south side of the pier hosts the U.S. Open of Surfing. It began in 1959 as the West Coast Surfing Championship, became the United States Surfing Championships in 1964, ran as the OP Pro (after its sponsor, Ocean Pacific) from 1982, and took the name U.S. Open of Surfing in 1994. Today it's a week-long event on the World Surf League's Qualifying Series, rated QS 10,000. The 2025 event was won by Levi Slawson and Sawyer Lindblad.

Where “Surf City USA” comes from

The name goes back to song. “Surf City,” written by Jan Berry and Brian Wilson and recorded by Jan and Dean, became the first surf song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, in 1963. Decades later, Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean lobbied Huntington's city council, which officially adopted the Surf City nickname in 1991.

Not everyone agreed. Santa Cruz, up the coast, had been calling itself Surf City since 1927, when a local newspaper coined the name. Huntington's visitors bureau trademarked “Surf City USA,” and in 2006 sent a cease-and-desist letter to two Santa Cruz surf shops selling T-shirts with the phrase. The shops fought back, and the two sides settled confidentially in January 2008. Huntington kept the name: its trademarks reached the federal Principal Register in 2009.

Tips for surfing or visiting

Why it's in daily.surf

Huntington Beach is the home break of Companies, daily.surf's matching game of well-known US companies. Every heat is one wave ridden in front of the pier, with the red-roofed building at its end, brown pelicans gliding low, and a trick for every company you match. It felt right: an American surf town for a game about American business, and the place that has done more than most to put surfing on the map.

Sources

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