Tom Grow surfing the east side of the Pensacola Beach Pier – 62ish years ago.
Strain your eyes a bit and you can see there was a good bit of development on the beach, but not much high density stuff. Look in the water, between Tom and the shore. At first glance it looks like a few people in the water, but those are actually “The Poles”. They may have originally been used to rope off a swimming area. In the early to mid 70’s they were jagged, barnacle encrusted, spikes sticking out of the water. We used to surf “the poles” because the waves were fun there, but the thought of falling on, or near them was daunting. It’s hard to imagine the Island Authority allowing a potential liability like that these days.
Photo courtesy of Tom Grow.