‘Where Mermaids Will Sport.’ A Bay Area city celebrates its 100-year-old pool

Six young women — hair fashionably bobbed, shins covered by knee-high socks — posed in dark, modest swimming suits in the tiled abyss of an empty swimming pool.

“Where Mermaids Will Sport” read the caption on their photo in the San Francisco Chronicle’s East Bay section.

It was 1926. The opening of a new municipal indoor swimming pool in the burgeoning town of Richmond was front-page news.

“A natatorium full of air, cement buckets and sawhorses is no pleasure to the eye,” the Chronicle read. “But when a little knitwear and a lot of pulchritude” — beauty — “are mixed in, the results serve to let Richmond and the rest of the world know that a pool is about to be opened.”

The Richmond Municipal Natatorium, now dubbed the Plunge, turns 100 this year, born the same year as such lovable icons as Route 66, filmmaker Mel Brooks and that “silly old bear” Winnie-the-Pooh.

And just as it did a century ago, Richmond, a city of 115,000 people, plans to celebrate, because the Plunge is such a big part of its identity.

“I run into people all the time who tell me their grandparents learned to swim here, their parents learned to swim here, and now they’re taking their kids to take lessons,” Robby Roller, aquatic supervisor for the city of Richmond, told me Wednesday.

The early era of indoor pools

Today, swimming pools and summertime in California go hand in hand. (Be sure to check out The Times’ guide to the best cheap places to swim around Los Angeles to try this summer!)

But indoor pools were a novelty a century ago. Exceptions included the famed Roman Pool at Hearst Castle, with its shimmering blue and gold mosaic tiles and statues of Roman gods and goddesses. Construction began in 1927 and took several years. In 1933, an indoor pool opened at the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had polio and swam for therapy.

The Roman Pool at Hearst Castle.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

When the Richmond Municipal Natatorium opened in March 1926, it was heralded with a parade, a marching band and drum line, a speech by the mayor, and a display of swim stunts and “fancy diving,” as the newspapers called it. The first to take a dip in the shallow end were two 4-year-olds, named Edith and Vera.

In a front-page missive in the Richmond Daily Independent, Mayor W.W. Scott wrote that the pool was a “handsome tribute to the progressive people of the city” who approved bonds that funded its more than $100,000 construction (more than $1.8 million today, when adjusted for inflation).

A whole lot of salt water

The Plunge, Roller told me, started with a local landowner’s failed attempt to drill for oil. He accidentally hit a well of fresh water and gave the parcel to the city, which built a pool inspired by the Sutro Baths in San Francisco — a massive public bathhouse that burned down in 1966.

The Richmond pool was enormous: 160 feet long and 60 feet wide, bigger than an Olympic-size pool. A long pipeline to a municipal wharf pumped in salt water straight from the San Francisco Bay that was mixed with the fresh well water, then heated and put into the pool.

“I still get phone calls from people asking if it’s still a saltwater pool,” Roller said. “It’s not anymore because the piping became corroded over a hundred years. We have salt in the pool, but it’s part of a chlorine base.”

It’s a survivor

After deteriorating and cracking for decades, the Richmond Plunge was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. By the late 1990s — after failed attempts to fund repairs — it was slated for demolition.

Residents protested. The nonprofit Richmond Friends of Recreation established a “Save the Richmond Plunge Trust.” And the pool reopened in 2010 after being closed for several years for a $7-million-plus renovation funded through a private-public partnership.

On Aug. 15, the city will celebrate the pool’s centennial with a building dedication, speeches and demonstrations by lifeguards and others who use the pool, Roller said. Pool entry that day, he said, will be $1 per family.

Today’s top stories

Travelers infectious with measles have passed through Los Angeles International Airport recently, including passengers who arrived on a Delta flight from Cancún and a British Airways flight from London.

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

Measles surge dramatically in California

• California has confirmed 52 measles cases in the first 6½ months of the year; that’s more than double the 25 cases reported in all of 2025.
• Of this year’s 52 cases, 49 patients were either unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination record. Many cases involve children or young adults.

Sony and Alamo Drafthouse to reopen the iconic Cinerama Dome

• Following a six-year shutdown prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Sony Pictures Entertainment has stepped in to restore and reopen the historic Hollywood landmark.
• Renovations on the dome will start next month and continue until early 2028.

UC to review high school course requirements amid SAT debate

• As UC reconsiders whether to bring back SAT and ACT scores, faculty are also launching a review of the high school course requirements for admission.
• Behind the debate are big questions for students and schools: How much math and broader academic rigor should UC demand?

What else is going on

• How climate change could redraw California’s wine map.
• A sex offender and fugitive for 21 years hid in plain sight as a yacht-owning L.A. biopharma executive.
• Pasadena businesses swelter after copper wire thieves wreck AC units.
• A year after Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s death, the actor’s widow sues his mother for $1.2 million.
• A new Trump administration rule will cut off federal student loans for college programs whose graduates consistently earn low incomes.
• If you watch YouTube, it may owe you $100.

Commentary and opinions

• Go visit Trump’s White House, Dodgers — but stand up for L.A. while you’re there, argues columnist Gustavo Arellano.
• In his latest column, Mark Z. Barabak writes about Sen. Adam Schiff’s warning against numbness or complacency in the face of the president’s corruption.
• Trump’s selling Wall Street early access to his Truth Social posts is ethically repugnant, but may be legal, columnist Michael Hiltzik writes.

This morning’s must-read

California

Giant rats, bright green flies, putrid smells: Unbearable conditions near Boyle Heights warehouse, residents say

Residents describe the conditions they’ve been living in nearly a month after a fire damaged a cold storage food warehouse in Boyle Heights.

July 23, 2026

Other must-reads

• A couple is raffling off their $2-million home for $7 to travel the world: “If not now, when?”
• They got their L.A. rentals ready for the World Cup. Did it pay off? For some, absolutely.

For your downtime

Jacqueline Castro runs tennis drills with her daughter, Ruby, 5, during a Mommy & Me tennis class at Burbank Tennis Club.

(Samanta Helou Hernandez / For The Times)

Going out

• Tennis classes: These L.A. moms are returning to sports for their kids — and themselves.
• Restaurants: Hot Dog on a Stick is making a comeback with a new owner, rapid expansion and lobster — on a stick.

Staying in

• Documentaries: In the Hulu documentary “My Grandfather Charles Manson,” Sophia Maddox grapples with the fact that the notorious killer and cult leader was her grandfather.
• Books: If you haven’t read double-Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead, start with these books.
• 🌮 Here’s a recipe for rib eye cachetada tacos from ‘Vitamina T.’
• ✏️ Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.

A question for you: What do you like about daylight saving time?

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And finally ... your photo of the day

The living room’s double-arch sliding glass doors are mirrored on the east and west walls, creating a breezy walk-through.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Ronaldo Bolaños at the historic Spanish-style, Wallace Neff home of a La Cañada Flintridge couple. Twenty years and $3.7 million later, the home has returned to glory.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Hailey Branson-Potts, staff writer
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

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