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Description

Early Development Map for Sunset Beach -- Liquor Restrictions to be Rigidly Enforced! -- Absolutely No Undertow!

Rare separately published promotional map for Sunset Beach, located between Anaheim Landing and Huntington Beach, as then promoted by teh Hall-Armitage Co.  434-5 Douglas Building.

Includes and illustration showing "Flowing Artesian Wells."  

Real estate broadside from the Hall Armitage Company with plat map for development at Sunset Beach, located on the Pacific Electric Railway between Anaheim Landing to the north and Huntington Beach to the south, as shown by the small inset map. The plat map shows lots on either side of Pacific Avenue between Anderson Street and Santa Ana Avenue, the various advantages of the location touted include "Liquor restrictions to be rigidly enforced" with prices "$225 Up." 

The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California notes on their website that

Prior to the 1929 depression, there was a movement to build summer cottages along the coast in the vicinity of Sunset Beach; this provided some extra patronage. After the Depression this trend halted; when good times returned an excellent paved highway attracted most of the vacationers' business....Drifting sand was a hazard to operation whenever high winds occurred; many times the ties were obscured by sand, and even the rail heads themselves disappeared regularly under the buffeting of the wind. Floods also were a menace; the San Gabriel River and other streams entered the Pacific Ocean under bridges used by this line, and when Southern California suffered one of its wet winters, bridges went out with regularity. This line was definitely an interurban line in character. Schedule speed in the late Twenties was around 30mph, giving this line the status of second-fastest on the entire PE system. Little traffic congestion was experienced as the line was entirely on private way except in Los Angeles and Newport Beach.

The map shows several boat houses, a Club House Grounds and Children's Playground, with a Wharf into the Pacific and dozens of lots on either side of Pacific Avenue and the line of the Pacific Electric Railway Company.

Sunset Beach was established as an unincorporated town on September 8, 1904, governed by the County of Orange. Its formal establishment followed construction of the Pacific Electric Railway (PER). The Newport-Balboa line was the first PER line into Orange County and ran down the coast from Long Beach. The line was extended into Huntington Beach via Seal Beach in Summer 1904. Sunset Beach was laid out along the tracks in 1905. An 80 foot wide boulevard was graded running north to south next to the “Red Car” line, the common reference to PER, and became known as Ocean Boulevard. This thoroughfare was renamed Pacific Coast Highway in 1926.