Hermosa Beach

Hermosa Beach is a sand-bottom South Bay beach city on the Santa Monica Bay coast of Los Angeles County, anchored by Hermosa Beach Pier at the foot of Pier Avenue. The current concrete pier extends 1,140 feet into the bay. It was built in 1965 to replace a 1914 concrete pier that had been condemned in 1957, and was designed by engineer James Crumpley of Moffatt and Nichol. The Strand, a paved bike and pedestrian path along the back of the beach, runs in both directions from the pier base. Pier Plaza, the pedestrian shopping and dining strip on Pier Avenue, runs inland from there and includes the Surfers Walk of Fame, a series of bronze plaques honoring South Bay surfers. Several hundred yards offshore in about 60 feet of water lies Cable Car Reef, also called the Hermosa Artificial Reef, built in 1960 from a streetcar, 14 automobiles, and 330 tons of quarry rock. The reef is a boat-only dive site and cannot be reached from shore.

The bottom along the named beach is sand throughout, with consistent breaking surf and no rocky structure or kelp within shore-access range, which makes the spot a surf zone biome. Without that structure to hold fish, spearfishing, snorkeling, and scuba from shore are all uncommon.

Surfing carries most of the in-water use, with hook-and-line fishing from the pier and the sand and summer swimming filling out the rest. Hermosa Beach is also a well-known competitive volleyball venue with permanent professional and tournament courts, and the AVP Tour calendar stops here regularly.

Paid municipal lots sit at the foot of Pier Avenue and along Hermosa Avenue, with hourly rates during the day, and metered street parking is available on the Strand-adjacent residential blocks. Spaces fill before 10 a.m. on summer weekends, with the Pier Plaza lot closest to the pier base. Spearfishing is prohibited within 1,000 feet of Hermosa Beach Pier per California Code of Regulations Title 14 Section 1.88. Outside that exclusion, fishing and spearfishing are legal along the named beach under standard California regulations.