Point Dume
| Point Dume State Beach | |
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| Location | Malibu, California |
| Nearest city | Santa Monica |
| Coordinates | 34°0′3.14″N 118°48′24.62″W / 34.0008722°N 118.8068389°WCoordinates: 34°0′3.14″N 118°48′24.62″W / 34.0008722°N 118.8068389°W |
| Governing body | California Department of Parks and Recreation |
Point Dume is a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.
Point Dume, a long bluff, forms the northern end of the Santa Monica Bay, and Point Dume Headlands Park affords a vista of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Santa Catalina Island. Zuma Beach lies to its immediate northwest.
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[edit] History
Point Dume was named by George Vancouver in 1793 in honor of Padre Francisco Dumetz of Mission San Buenaventura. The name was misspelled as "Dume" on Vancouver's map and has never been corrected.[1]
In the mid-1930s, the 900-ton steam-schooner California, of the California Sea Products Company, would anchor in Paradise Cove about a mile offshore, near Point Dume, and process whales caught by her two "killer boats", the Hawk and Port Saunders. She spent about four months there each winter (December-April), mostly flensing gray whales on their annual migration from Alaska to Baja California and back. Emerson Gaze, a reporter who spent a day with the fleet, said they had caught over fifty whales up to late January 1936, nearly all gray (with the exception of a few humpback and sperm whales).[2] Nial O’Malley Keyes, in his book Blubber Ship (1939, pp. 49-50), reported large numbers of whales were caught within a mile of Malibu (in or before 1934), a reference to the Point Dume operation.
Up to the 1940s Point Dume was a windblown, treeless bluff covered by native chaparral. Post-WWII the bluff was slowly settled by independent-minded folks, who planted trees and other non-native flora among their single-family homesteads. In 1968, Point Dume Elementary School was opened, but was closed in 1980. It reopened in 1996 and remains open today, known as the Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School. By 2007, many of the simple homesteads were torn down to make way for mansions and mega-mansions behind walls, many with expansive oceanviews while other large homes were surrounded by mature trees.
[edit] State Preserve
The northwestern most tip of Point Dume was designated a California State Preserve, the Point Dume State Beach.[3] Located along Cliffside Drive, very limited parking is available. Its beach is protected by the Lifeguard unit of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Street parking is available on Grasswood, a short walk from the headlands. The cove, located just south of the point, was once a popular clothing optional meeting spot in the sixties and seventies.
[edit] Rock Climbing
Point Dume is home to a handful of very moderate single pitch rock climbing routes that are usually climbed on top rope from established fixed anchors. It's a common place to take novice climbers due to the ease of access, ease of routes, as well as the beautiful and unique setting for rock climbing.
[edit] Filming location
The Normandy landings of the film D-Day the Sixth of June were filmed at Point Dume.
Important scenes in the Planet of the Apes series were filmed at Point Dume's Westward Beach. For an entire summer during the filming, the scale replica of the Statue of Liberty from the famous closing scene lay buried at the southern end of Pirate's Cove. In Iron Man (film), Tony Stark's huge seaside mansion is located on Point Dume on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Though interior shots of the home were filmed on real sets, the house itself is fictional. Because Point Dume is a protected area and thus construction on its cliffs is strictly prohibited, the home was created as a 3D model and digitally placed on the rocks in post-production. With its close proximity to the film and television industry location, Point Dume's Westward Beach continues to be a popular filming location for films, television, advertisements, and videos, appearing frequently whenever a beach scene is needed.
In "The Big Lebowski", Walter and Dude scattered Donnie's ashes from a Point Dume cliff, and in real life Vincent Price's ashes were put here.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Bright, William; Erwin G. Gudde (1998). 1500 California Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21271-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=CET4QodMZysC. |page= 51}}
- ^ Gaze, Emerson. 1936. Floating factory converts giants of the deep into marketable products. Santa Monica Evening Outlook. 30 January 1936, p. 8, Santa Monica, CA.
- ^ Point Dume State Beach
- ^ Point Dume at Find a Grave
