Casualties of January Storms

By Noel Smith

For years during the drought fallen trees, limbs and branches have been accumulating along our local stream and riverbeds along with the refuse of illegal dumping sites. Then comes a rainy season like this one when rain and its runoff scour these areas clean bringing tons of debris down from our hills and mountains and into the bay.

Storm waves then throw all those trees, limbs and branches along with tires, plastic, and old furniture back onto our beaches. It’s a sight that you’ll never forget when our white sandy beaches disappear under a covering of dark wood and waste.

Fortunately many of our local residents, both officially and unofficially, are dedicated to cleaning up all this rubble. Some will end up as art, some as firewood and most will find a final resting place in our landfills.

This winter with its fierce storms and torrential rains, has not only brought an end to our latest drought, but has changed the scenic cement ship on Seacliff Beach, originally known as the S.S. Palo Alto, into a pile of concrete rubble. The ocean has been slowly wearing away at this relic of WWI and the Great Depression ever since it was intentionally run up to the beach and sunk in 1930.

The SS Palo Alto was built as a concrete tanker by the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company at the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Oakland, California too late to see service in World War I. She was launched on May 29, 1919 and was mothballed in Oakland until 1929, when the Seacliff Amusement Corporation bought her.

The SS Palo Alto was towed to what is now Seacliff State Beach. She was sunk just off the beach with her keel resting on the bottom. A pier was built leading to the ship and she was refitted as an amusement ship with a dance floor, a swimming pool and a café. Two years later during the great depression the company went bankrupt and she was stripped of her fine fittings and left as a fishing pier.

On Saturday January 21, 2017 the ocean finally finished breaking the ship apart as record breaking 34-foot waves covered Monterey Bay.

Today at the age of 98 remnants the SS Palo Alto sit at the end of a fishing pier on Seacliff Beach serving as an artificial reef for marine life and a unique reminder of the past as the sea relentlessly caresses and batters her as it brings the cement ship back to itself.