California Coast 01: Balboa Pavilion at Dawn

(color version below)

Image Commentary

This image was captured at around 5.00 am in Mid-November and shows the Balboa Pavillion at dawn before the lights are turned off for the day. The Pavillion is an icon in Newport Harbor and has been since its construction in the early 20th Century. In that earlier day Newport was a more bucolic locale, a sleepy harbor occupying a pristine lagoon, littered with large tidal sand banks that were divided by just a few navigable channels. Its transformation to the bustling cosmopolitan place that it is today really began in the 1920's and 1930's when a few movie stars of the day, many being swash-buckling sorts with a penchant for very fine sailing boats, moved to the bay as an ideal escape from the rigors of Hollywood life. Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, John Wayne, Spencer Tracy to name a few, all kept boats in Newport at various times, and some (like John Wayne and Shirley Temple) made it their permanent home.

The Bay's attraction has always been it's capacity for small boats and it's maritime charm. Large expanses of clear blue-green water, but too shallow for large commercial vessels, meant it was never industrialized in any significant manner. As it's reputation spread, it's attraction for building waterfront homes increased. Soon many of the shallow sandbanks were being built up to accomodate the press for increased real estate. The channels were widened and deepened and more and more small craft found their permanent moorings behind the protection of the Balboa Peninsula.

The origin of the Bay goes back to the end of the last Pleistocene ice age. When the planet cooled and the ice cover advanced, sea level was considerably lower and Newport Bay was in fact a river valley flowing to a seaway that lay quite some distance further out than where it is today. When the planet began to warm, much of the continental ice sheets melted and sea level rose, eventually flooding the river valley and transforming it into the tidal lagoon we see today.

California Coast 05: Balboa Pavilion at Dawn (color ver.)