Santa Monica: The Birthplace of Paddleboarding

A paddleboarding revival is fully under way, and it's being underscored by Saturday's second-annual Paddleboard Race & Ocean Festival. But while lakes and rivers are to thank for the sport's recent surge in the U.S., there is no more fitting place for a paddleboard celebration than Santa Monica, where it was born.

"There's a rich paddleboarding history here, and it has been to some degree forgotten," Joel Brand, one of the event organizers, told Santa Monica Patch. "People think stand-up paddleboarding is relatively new, but it's really a modification of paddleboarding that was extremely popular in the '40s and '50s."

In the late 1920s, Tom Blake devised the original hollow paddleboard at the pier. He "first came up with a surfboard designed on an airplane wing’s spar-construction principles,” historian Craig Lockwood said in a statement.

While the original paddleboards were made of heavy, solid wood, Blake's design cut in half their 150-pound weight—which, in turn, made the sport more accessible.

Santa Monica lifeguard Pete Peterson—one of the most legendary paddleboarders of all time—subsequently refined Blake's design in a workshop at the pier.

Also, it was in Santa Monica where, in the 1940s, the sport significantly grew in popularity. At that time, the Santa Monica Paddleboard Club and the all-women Manoa Paddleboard Club had offices and board storage on the pier.

"There was a really tight community of folks who were lifeguards and paddle-boarders and surfers who thought of the Santa Monica Pier as their home," Brand said.

The clubs regularly staged races at the pier, and throngs of spectators would attend. Paddleboard race results were printed in the local newspaper.

But when surfing technology arrived in the '50s, that sport began to eclipse paddleboarding, as surfboards were even lighter than paddleboards.

In recent years, the sport has become repopularized, thanks in large part to Laird Hamilton, the famous surfer.

Now, "the growth of paddleboarding is pretty spectacular," Brand said.

One of biggest names from the '40s era will be at Saturday's event, which is benefiting . Esther Maire, who won 1947's Pacific Coast Paddle Board Championship, will be showing off the board she used to win the race.

Paying heed to Santa Monica's rich history of paddleboarding, a temporary, 2,000-square-foot "museum-for-a-day" will be featured at the fest. It'll also contain artifacts related to surfing, lifeguards and skateboarding.

Go here for more info on the Paddleboard Race & Ocean Festival, and go here to check out a massive gallery of historical photos.