Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach is a city on the coast of Orange County in southern California, south of Long Beach on the Pacific shore. Known by the trademarked nickname Surf City USA, it holds the US Open of Surfing beside its pier every summer.

The town took the name of Henry E. Huntington, whose Pacific Electric Railway brought its red streetcars to the beach in the early 1900s. George Freeth, the Hawaiian surfer, rode the waves at the opening of the first pier, and surfing has been part of the town ever since. A bronze statue of Duke Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian surfer and Olympic swimmer, stands at the foot of the pier on Main Street. Huntington Beach became a city in 1909, and oil found under it in 1920 covered the hills and the shore with derricks for decades. Housing tracts replaced the farms of celery and lima beans in the 1960s.

Quiksilver, the surfwear brand, has its head office in Huntington Beach under its parent company Boardriders. Cleveland Golf, a maker of wedges and other golf clubs, is also based in the city.

The Huntington Beach Pier, rebuilt in concrete in the 1990s, reaches far into the surf and ends with a restaurant at its tip. The International Surfing Museum shows boards, photos and films from the history of the sport. The Surfers' Hall of Fame on Main Street keeps the handprints and footprints of famous surfers in cement. Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, a salt marsh on the north edge of the city, is a nesting place for terns and other shorebirds.