Waterman's Plaza

A small open plaza at the harbour with bronze statues of the legendary surfers and watermen associated with Dana Point: Hobie Alter, Phil Edwards, Bruce Brown of The Endless Summer, Joyce Hoffman, and others. Plaques explain who each was and what they did. The plaza is more poignant than a roadside monument has any business being, partly because the wave it commemorates was destroyed by the harbour the plaza now sits inside.

Worth ten minutes on a walk around the harbour. Bring a couple of surf-history nerds and you can stretch it into an hour.

things to do sight
A story
Killer Dana was one of the best longboard waves in California, breaking across the bay where the harbour now sits. The breakwater built in 1966 killed it. Statues at Waterman's Plaza honour the surfers and watermen — Hobie Alter, Phil Edwards, Bruce Brown, and others — who shaped Dana Point's surf culture before that wave was lost. Hobie Alter's foam-and-fibreglass surfboard, mass-produced from a Dana Point factory starting in 1958, did more than any single thing to spread surfing from California to the rest of the world.

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