Next time you sink your toes into the sand at Manhattan Beach,
know that there’s some history behind it. At one time, the white,
fine-grained sand from the South Bay was used to help create one of the most
famous resort beaches in the world.
The area now known as Manhattan Beach once had a problem: Too much sand.
Manhattan Beach is built on sand, and as civic development was underway after
the turn of the 20th century, a broad sand dune ran the length of the city,
some standing 50 to 70 feet high.
As it turned out, during the early 1920’s developers in the Hawaiian Islands
just happened to be in the market for sand. They found it in Manhattan Beach.
According to a 1973 article from The Daily Breeze, Marshall and
Bob Kuhn of Kuhn Bros. Construction Co. and Builders Materials Co. made a
deal with Hawaiian officials to ship sand to Waikiki Beach, which suffered
from erosion problems. So the Kuhn brothers hauled the sand up from the beach
and loaded it on to railroad cars, where it was transported to the harbor in
San Pedro and shipped by barge or ship to Hawaii.
According to Bob Kuhn, his company was the sole provider of sand to build
Waikiki and other beaches.The sand exporting lasted
until the 1970's. The sand at Manhattan Beach had other destinations, such as
the base of the Los Angeles Coliseum and to help build the Pacific Coast
Highway. But as fate would have it, Waikiki Beach would not be what it is
today without an assist from Manhattan Beach.
