Local P’cola surfer, Tom Grow, surfing the east side of our pier almost 60 years ago.
If you look super close, toward the beach, you’ll see a few black dots. They look like swimmers, or surfers, but are metal poles – probably to border a designated swimming area. This photo was taken around 1963. By the early ’70s, those poles deteriorated into jagged, broken poles. They actually helped create a decent sandbar. It became a “spot” – called…” The Poles”.
It was fun to surf there, but also a little daunting as the waves sucked up to reveal these lethal, barnacle-encrusted spears. It’s amazing that the Island Authority didn’t remove them for years. They could have been such a financial liability due to the danger of a surfer or swimmer being swept onto them by waves or currents.
I guess things were just different back then😀