View of Ocean Is Losing Ground

It’s one of Southern California’s most rugged spots. It’s also one of the most fragile.

The abrupt way that the continent comes to an end in Santa Monica with a spectacular, 100-foot cliff that towers over the Pacific Ocean is breathtaking.

But the bluff at Palisades Park keeps falling down. And local and federal officials are ready to spend $6 million to keep it standing.

Santa Monica city leaders are wrapping up a two-year study they hope will show them how the landmark 1.6-mile bluff can be stabilized so it is not at risk for collapsing onto busy Pacific Coast Highway at its base.

Despite its rock-solid appearance, the bluff has been stripped of more than 30 feet of its ocean-side face because of landslides and erosion over the last 70 years.

The probe has included a first-ever geologic survey of the cliff. Workers who drilled 4-inch holes about 90 feet deep at 20 sites along the bluff are putting together a subterranean map of its sandstone and clay deposits and pockets of underground water.

The water table is a crucial issue for the palisade. It not only can liquefy the soil during earthquakes, but it also lubricates the substrata and causes landslides and cliff-face sloughing at other times.

Although recommendations for stabilizing the bluffs won’t be made until later this year, officials anticipate that construction of vertical wells and “hydraugers” -- perforated drain pipes inserted horizontally into the cliff -- will play a role in removing the water.

“There’s a buildup of hydrostatic pressure that is pushing against the face of the bluff,” Santa Monica city engineer Anthony Antich said Tuesday. “The concept is to control the amount of water that is building up under there.”

A surprise gusher that popped through the side of the bluff about five years ago was the tipoff that there was a water problem beneath the park.

“It looked like a broken fire hydrant. We thought there must be something on the top side that was broken,” Antich said.

“Water maintenance workers looked at all the lines and could find no pressure drop. The only place the water was coming was from the ground,” the city engineer added.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake sent several sections of the bluff cascading onto Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica officials used Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to move a concrete railing fence and paved pathway back from the edge of the cliff. Parts of the park were regraded and new drains were installed to direct runoff away from the top of the bluff.

These days, yellow tape warns park users away from one potentially dangerous area and a chain-link barrier closes off another.

Remnants of collapsed fencing and walkways are visible where edges of the bluff have given way near Ocean Avenue’s intersections with Santa Monica Boulevard and Arizona Avenue.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” said Aneta Grochulska, a nanny who was walking with her 3-year-old charge in the park this week -- and keeping her distance from the edge.

“But it would be a shame to close the park. They should try to protect it from falling.”

A hundred years ago, the palisade was in far worse shape.

Early photographs reveal a rough, badly eroded cliff standing over a narrow, often rocky beach.

The flat top of the palisade was gouged by deep ravines that were carved inward as much as 25 feet. Visitors sat on benches a few feet from the drop-off, unprotected by any fencing or guardrails.

Crumbled-away pieces of the palisades were removed from the base of the bluff in the 1890s when train tracks were laid along the beach next to the bluff. They were removed in 1933 after a paved road along the beach was built. That road eventually was widened to the base of the bluff to become Pacific Coast Highway.

The area atop the bluff was designated a Santa Monica park after it was donated to the city by the widow of Col. Robert S. Baker, an early landowner who is considered -- with Nevada Sen. John P. Jones -- a co-founder of the city.

Ocean-view lots atop the palisade were among the first in Santa Monica to be sold in 1875. Parcels on the east side of what is now Ocean Avenue went for as little as $300. Land on the ocean side of the street was not offered for sale. Instead, Linda Vista Park was created.

By the early 1900s, the dangerous bluffs had been fenced off by a barrier of twisted eucalyptus branches.

Eventually, the area was renamed Palisades Park and decorative concrete fencing was installed.

The cliff face that has disappeared over the last century has often crumbled away in small chunks.

But sometimes there have been dramatic landslides.

In the 1950s, several women picnicking at the park slid about 100 feet to Pacific Coast Highway when the ground beneath their park bench gave way.

In 1958 they won a $35,000 lawsuit against the city, prompting officials to briefly consider closing Palisades Park to the public.

Instead, city workers began closely monitoring the bluff, cordoning off areas considered unstable and occasionally rerouting paved walkways and the concrete fencing.

This week, visitor Marie Langfield stopped to study a collapsed section of walkway that disappeared at the edge of the cliff.

“It’s slowly eroding away. I remember walking out there in the 1950s,” said Langfield, a retired Rand Corp. worker who now lives in Happy Camp, Calif.

“I’m looking at this and feeling sad for my granddaughter, who won’t be able to see it like I did 50 years ago.”