AT 15, DANA POINT IS A BOOMING HARBOR : Beneath a Lofty Bluff Glisten Yachts, Restaurants, Shops With Far-Reaching Influence

Fifteen years ago, one of the world’s finest man-made small boat harbors was opened beneath the brooding bluffs of Dana Point, touching off a new era of growth and development that spread far beyond the small south county community.

More quickly than even the most optimistic planners could have wished, 2,500 glistening private boats worth millions of dollars were tucked safely into slips behind a mile-long breakwater. Exclusive yacht clubs were being built. The county was leasing waterfront parcels at a pace that surprised even county officials, and luxury restaurants and shops were opening. A launching ramp was soon handling up to 1,000 trailered boats a day.

Affluence--and property values--was busting out all over. Whether they knew it or not, the builders had also created something for thousands of the not-so-affluent old folks and children who may never set foot on a boat, and hikers, joggers, bicyclists, picnickers and the like.

In numbers, use of the harbor by non-boaters far exceeds the activities of the sailors and power boaters.

“I don’t even want a boat,” said Ted Hunter, 53, who had two small fishing lines in the water off the stubby little pier in the harbor’s west end. His wife, Margit, had her two poles nearby.

“I just want to breathe air I don’t have to look at. You know, clear air,” he said. “We drive 100 miles round-trip several times a week just to be here. We live in Riverside, you see.”

He gazed down into the calm water, watched a gull soar past, glanced at the tall-sparred brig, Pilgrim, anchored nearby.

“There’s a silence, an ambiance here that, well. . . .”

Dana Point Harbor will mark its 15th anniversary sometime this summer, and the time might be July 31 because, although it is rather uncertain when work actually was completed, a dedication ceremony was held on that date in 1971--even though many slips had been finished and some boats had moved in several months earlier.

Specific dates never seemed to mean much around there.

For example, it is recorded that construction began on Aug. 29, 1966, and on that date an eight-ton boulder was selected from among the thousands that were going to be used to build the outer breakwaters. It was put aside near the foot of a cliff, someday to become a marker for the main entrance to the harbor on Del Obispo street, and it was to have a hole bored in it to hold a time capsule filled with historic documents, and a plaque was to be put over the hole, carrying the date Aug. 29, 1966.

But the plaque and the time capsule weren’t ready then, and the rock wasn’t moved to its final spot until October, 1968, a little more than two years later. Then, finally, the plaque and the time capsule were installed. The plaque declares that in exactly 50 years, on Aug. 29, 2016--not October, 2018--the time capsule will be opened.

The rock, because of changes in construction plans, does not mark the harbor entrance, but it is sometimes noticed by visitors to nearby Doheny State Beach.

And the eight-foot bronze statue of author-seaman Richard Henry Dana Jr., for whom the harbor is named, wasn’t there for the dedication ceremonies on July 31, 1971.

There was an excuse for at least part of the delay--a hurricane off the Mexican coast, according to Larry Leaman, who now heads the county’s Social Services Agency but who then was administrative assistant in the old Harbor District.

The statue had been cast at Carrara, Italy, and mounted on a base of famous Carrara marble. On its way here by Italian freighter, the big storm struck, and “for two whole weeks, nobody here knew where our statue was,” Leaman said.

Construction of the $24-million harbor was somewhat of an engineering marvel at the time, in no way to be compared to Newport Harbor a few miles up the coast, where the basic configuration was provided by nature--and where, coincidentally, a 50th anniversary was celebrated just last month.

The long, sandy Balboa Peninsula provided Newport Harbor its protection from the open sea. Some dredging and the construction of rock groins to provide an entrance were about all that was needed.

The site of Dana Point Harbor was open to anything the ocean could hurl at it. The waves that rolled in were big enough to give the site the ominous name of Killer Dana, a favorite spot for surfers. It was a good fishing area and provided abundant abalone and spiny lobster for divers.

The awesome bulk of rock, 125-foot-high Dana Point itself, jutted out at the westerly end of what would become the harbor, and the tip of this point was used to anchor one end of the mile-long breakwater that parallels the coast. Another, shorter breakwater reaches out at right angles to the shore down coast, stopping short of the larger one to form the harbor entrance.

Configurations of both breakwaters were determined by extensive experiments at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ waterways testing station at Vicksburg, Miss. Kenneth Sampson, who was then head of the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks Department and considered one of the prime movers behind creation of the harbor, took an active part in overseeing those tests.

Once the breakwaters were completed, earth-moving machines chewed away at portions of the historic bluffs and deposited the soil and rock in a U-shaped coffer dam in the protected waters, with the ends anchored to the beach.

More than 200 million gallons of ocean water, trapped in the coffer dam, were pumped out so that work on concrete retaining walls, slips and a bridge could be done “in the dry” for what Sampson said was a better and cheaper job.

When that phase was completed, openings were cut in each leg of the U to let the ocean back in.

The impact of the new harbor was widespread and immediate, and, if anything, it has continued to grow.

“Its influence is so far-reaching that it’s difficult to evaluate,” said Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes Dana Point.

Without it, the development called Lantern Bay, a complex of multimillion-dollar homes, grand condominiums, elegant restaurants and shops--all built on the bluffs that were graded as part of the harbor work--would not exist, Riley said.

In turn, the development of Lantern Bay led to the recent creation of the Dana Couplet, in which traffic is carried one way on Coast Highway and the other way on nearby Del Prado Avenue. The system improves traffic flow and increases parking in the heart of Dana Point’s business district.

Edward Conway, president of the Dana Point Chamber of Commerce, said “it’s impossible to figure the monetary impact” that the harbor has had on the southern county, “except to say it’s tremendous.”

“It attracts people from far away so that we can court new tourism,” he said. “Furthermore, I doubt that the Ritz-Carlton (a world-class hotel a mile up the coast) would have sited itself exactly there without the harbor.”

Linda Adams, spokeswoman for the hotel, said, “I can’t say the presence of the harbor was the deciding factor in locating here, but it (the harbor) certainly enhances our operations. We charter fishing boats for our guests, or cocktail and moonlight cruises. We get them sailing lessons and wind-surfing lessons there. They come here to play, and the harbor is only five minutes away.”

Aside from boat owners, users of the harbor fall into several categories, one of which involves the Orange County Marine Institute, located under the cliffs at the west end, with the square-rigger Pilgrim anchored a few yards away.

“On a yearly basis, we have 42,000 people, 85% of them schoolchildren, taking part in our Science of the Sea program, which includes cruises on a research vessel and lab work in our classroom, and our Marine Heritage program, in which they experience the life of an old seaman on board the Pilgrim,” institute director Stan Cummings said. “In addition to that, we have about 60,000 walk-through visitors a year.”

Action at the institute is only part of what goes on outside the boat slips.

Numerous picnic tables are filled every weekend; level walkways wind through tastefully landscaped areas throughout the harbor, inviting hikers, joggers and bicyclists by the thousands; shops and restaurants line portions of the waterways.

Parking has become a serious problem, particularly on weekends and during special events, such as the annual Festival of the Whales.

But that doesn’t slow down another 40,000 persons who go deep-sea fishing aboard the Dana Wharf sportfishing boats each year and the other 10,000 who charter the same vessels during the winter months to go whale-watching.

And then there are the people such as Ted Hunter and his wife, who drive 50 miles each way from Riverside several times a week to dip their fishhooks into the water from the little pier at the harbor’s west end.

“This isn’t like other piers along the coast,” Hunter said. “At most of the others, people are not very friendly. They’re there to catch their dinner, not to chat.

“Here, we talk to everybody about all sorts of things, a lot of it about how nice and quiet it is here, with this ambiance.

“Sure, I’d like to catch a nice calico bass, but they have to be 12 inches to be legal, and I usually catch them six inches at a time,” he laughed, and at that moment he did just that, pulled in a six-inch calico bass, unhooked it and dropped it back in the water.