Thousand Steps Beach

Thousand Steps Beach is a wide sand beach in the South Laguna neighborhood of Laguna Beach, Orange County, reached by a long public stairway that drops from South Coast Highway across from 9th Avenue. The name overstates the climb. The stairway runs a little over 200 steps, steep enough that most descriptions of the beach lead with the walk back up rather than the sand at the bottom. Sandstone bluffs frame the beach on both sides, rocky points close off either end, and a sea cave at the south end opens up at low tide. Public restrooms sit at the bottom of the stairs. Table Rock Beach lies just up the coast to the north, and the Three Arch Bay shoreline continues south.

The center of the beach is open sand with surf breaking straight onto it, which puts Thousand Steps Beach in the surf zone biome. Rock runs out from both ends into the shallows, and that structure carries a rocky reef biome within an easy swim of the sand. The seagrass biome is the surfgrass on the shallow rock at either end of the beach.

Swimming, sunbathing, and bodyboarding carry most of the use on the sand, and the tidepools at both ends draw people down at low tide. Snorkeling and freediving work the rocky ends and the reef past them, which is the structure that makes the stairs worth it. Spearfishing is legal here under the rules of the conservation area that covers this stretch of coast.

Parking is the hard part. There is no lot, and the metered and residential street parking along South Coast Highway and the blocks above the bluff stays full through the summer. Under California Code of Regulations Title 14, take of all living marine resources is prohibited inside the Dana Point State Marine Conservation Area, with three exceptions: recreational hook-and-line fishing for finfish, recreational spearfishing for finfish, and recreational take of spiny lobster and sea urchin. Take from the tidepools is prohibited. The boundary matters here, because the Laguna Beach State Marine Conservation Area (No-Take) begins about 500 meters up the coast at Table Rock, and nothing at all may be taken north of that line.