RIGHT, splish, splash. Carpinteria beaches have long drawn sunbathers and water lovers. Pictured on a 1930s postcard enjoying the beach at Cerca del Mar, these girls must have ended up with wet bonnets and wonderful memories from their beach visit.
BELOW, by the 1950s, Cerca del Mar had been remodeled into a State Beach store, ranger offices and housing for park personnel. Its massive ballroom had been removed and its elegance replaced with functionality.
ground. Few improvements, however, could be made by the cash strapped state. During World War II, a battery of the U.S. Army
Coast Artillery moved into the elegant clubhouse, and the servicemen slept on cots in the ballroom. Dances with local girls were held in the clubhouse or in the Veterans Memorial Hall, and a handful of the servicemen met their future wives while they were stationed at Cerca del Mar.
Jane Bianchin and Bonnie Milne had just gradu-
ated from Carpinteria High School in 1942 when a battery of young men from Kansas moved into Cerca del Mar. The two local ladies remember afternoons on the beach flirting with the boys and evenings swing dancing to records blasting the big band music of Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. After the war, the State Beach reopened and
Cerca del Mar was remodeled to house park staff and a beach store. The ballroom wing of the club- house and the pier were demolished. The park gained popularity and expanded regularly to meet the constantly swelling demand for sites. In 1972, park officials weighed the benefits of the former clubhouse, and, “We decided we needed more camping spaces more than we did the building,” said a park employee in a Dec. 19 Herald article. The clubhouse was razed and new campsites constructed.
The glamour of silk stockings, gourmet dinners and three- piece suits that occupied such a brief moment of the prop- erty’s history bowed out to a more comfortably Carpinterian allure—bathing suits, hotdogs and campfires. But maybe on occasion, the wind through the eucalyptus trees picks up the melodies of a ghost orchestra and the sliver of a moon over the beach grins like Edward B. Coyle on the fabulous opening night of Cerca del Mar. ¢
summer2010 77
COurTesy OF CaLIFOrNIa sTaTe Parks, 1952
COurTesy OF CarPINTerIa vaLLey museum OF HIsTOry
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