San Onofre State Beach (Old Man's)

San Onofre State Beach runs along a low bluff 3 miles south of San Clemente, on the ocean side of Old Highway 101 and just north of the shut-down San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The day-use surfing area divides into 3 named breaks, The Point at the north end, Old Man's in the middle, and Dogpatch closest to the plant. Old Man's is the name most people use for the whole beach. The waves are long and slow, which is why the beach suits beginners and longboarders and why it holds a place in the early history of West Coast surfing.

The bottom is sand with cobble mixed through it and little reef relief inside the surf line. That sand and the steady breaking waves make the beach a surf zone biome, and the cobble patches scattered between the sand add a rocky reef biome, low and without kelp growing on it. A kelp bed sits offshore on the shelf beyond the break, extending the spot into a kelp forest biome, though divers and spearfishermen work that kelp from boats rather than swimming out from the beach.

The power plant immediately south stopped generating in 2013, after defects were found in its replacement steam generators, and has been coming apart since. Demolition of the containment domes is scheduled to finish by the end of 2027, and once they are down the seawall, the switchyard, and the dry-storage casks holding the spent fuel are what remain on the site.

Surfing and summer swimming account for nearly all the water use, and surf fishing along the sand produces croaker and surfperch. Shore diving and spearfishing are uncommon, because the inshore bottom carries little structure and visibility over open sand rarely rewards the swim. Round stingrays are common on warm shallow sand like this through the summer months.

One dirt road drops from the bluff to the beach, and the lot at the bottom sits on the sand itself, one of the few places in Southern California where a car parks a few steps from the water. Day use costs $15, or $20 on peak days, and an annual California State Parks pass covers it. That road is the weak point: storms in February 2024 washed out a section and closed vehicle access for roughly 2 months until repairs finished on April 8, 2024, and erosion has since narrowed the road enough that some pull-in spaces were converted to parallel parking. No marine protected area covers this coast, so fishing and spearfishing are legal under standard California regulations.