Party at Marina Is Still Going On : Recreation: Richard Henry Dana wouldn’t recognize the harbor where he visited in 1835: It’s home to 2,500 boats.

Twenty years ago today, Dana Point Harbor got its first taste of champagne.

With a crowd cheering him on, Bob Dahlberg took a firm hold on a bottle of vintage champagne and cracked it against the side of a piling, sending the bubbly and broken glass tumbling into the Pacific.

Like most christenings, the one on June 3, 1971, marked a beginning--both of the marina and a daylong party. And today, that party continues in a fashion, as thousands of people from throughout Orange County flock to the harbor during the summer to take advantage of its beauty and tranquility.

Only 300 boats were docked on that opening day, but today there are 2,500 boats in two marinas, and there are three yacht clubs, a commercial fishing fleet, restaurants, shops, the Orange County Marine Institute and the Orange County Youth and Group Facility--all of which combine to lure thousands of people daily, particularly in the summer.

“People come here to picnic, to shop, to dine, to sail, to do anything you can do close to the water,” said Dee Bower, a spokesperson for the Dana Point Marina Merchants Assn. “We have beautiful and expensive yachts here, but you don’t need to be rich to enjoy this harbor.”

Never again would it be the rocky cove that Richard Henry Dana, the Harvard student turned sailor and writer, had visited in 1835 and noted in his book, “Two Years Before the Mast.”

The loss of that cove, famous for its surf, was of little concern to the party-goers on board a 125-foot yacht chartered for the day.

Dahlberg, now 62 and still associated with the Dana Point Marina, the first of the harbor’s two marinas, remembers that day 20 years ago well.

“It was a very euphoric feeling, just a tremendous experience,” Dahlberg said. “The first major step of constructing the marina had been achieved. The whole area around us was barren territory, but the feeling of completion that day was all I ever dreamed it would be.”

For Dahlberg and others, the party also marked an end to the 26-year struggle to build a harbor and marina at Dana Point.

Lining the dock that morning were Kenneth Sampson, manager of the Orange County Harbor District; state Assemblyman Robert Badham of Newport Beach, who later became a congressman, and his wife, Anne; county Supervisors Ronald W. Caspers and Ralph B. Clark, and Dahlberg.

Dahlberg and Bob Wingard, who was Sampson’s assistant and is now the director of administration for the county Environmental Management Agency, credit Sampson as the man most responsible for the celebration. Sampson died in March, 1990, at age 83.

“Without question Ken was the man with the vision of that harbor,” Wingard said. “Ken was able to get that harbor started because he was able to work in so many different areas, from understanding the complicated engineering matters to understanding finances to understanding the planning factors.”

Sampson, a California native and longtime county resident, was hired as manager of what was then called the Orange County Harbor District in April, 1957.

Even then the harbor project had had been kicked around for over a decade.

Of the $8 million it took to build the harbor, half was generated from federal funding and half from county funds, Wingard said. The state donated 579 acres of tidelands in the form of a tidelands grant to the county.

The state also appropriated $1 million in harbor funding that was never accepted by the county, Wingard said. “The state did more than enough by donating the tidelands.”

Caspers and Clark were at the christening representing the county.

Caspers was an avid boater who died in a tragic accident at sea in 1974. He was returning from a trip to Cabo San Lucas in a converted PT boat when it sank in a storm.

Clark, now 74, was a supervisor from Anaheim and its former mayor. He retired in 1986 after 16 years of county service.

“I think it’s proven to be one of the crown jewels in the county’s recreational parks program,” Clark said. “It was certainly a much-needed facility down there and it added to the enhancement of the entire county while offering more recreation to the citizens.”

Not everyone in the county agreed. A group of surfers who were attempting to save their beach spearheaded a protest.

Ron Drummond of San Clemente, now 84 and still surfing, was their leader.

“We were considered surfing vandals, but I just wanted to save Dana Cove,” Drummond said. “When I paddle around the harbor today I see lots of oil spills . . . but I believe it’s a nice place too.”

Dahlberg, who built the marina, may be most responsible for the look of the harbor today. He is the man who left a successful life in education to launch a new career as a builder.

His construction experience came from building schools such as Mission Viejo High School. Looking back today, Dahlberg says people only see the end result and not the struggle that went into the project.

“People don’t understand the fear and apprehension that went into building something like this all at one time,” Dahlberg said. “Then for our first 15 years we were really struggling. Now we are extremely successful, but it wasn’t always that way.”