The george freeth memorial in Redondo Beach is a salt-bitten bust of a lifeguard in an old-fashioned swimming vest, gazing with the stoicism we expect from early surf heroes into the deep mystery of a concrete parking garage. His back is to the Redondo Pier. Locals jog or skate past this memorial without noticing the plaque, which reads, "First Surfer in the United States," and then relates the story of how Freeth was paid by Los Angeles real estate and streetcar magnate Henry Huntington in 1907 to lure people to Redondo Beach to watch a new kind of athlete trim the waves. "George Freeth was advertised as 'The Man Who Can Walk on Water,' " according to the plaque. "Thousands of people came here ... to watch this astounding feat. George would mount his big 8-foot-long, solid wood, 200-pound surfboard far out in the surf. He would wait for a suitable wave, catch it, and to the amazement of all, ride onto the beach while standing upright."
100 years of hanging ten
The memorial is outdated: Freeth was only the first \o7celebrity \f7surfer in America. The first men on record to surf North America are now considered to be three Hawaiian princes who noticed that waves at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz were up to snuff. Jonah Kalaniana'ole and David and Edward Kawananakoa shaped boards from local redwoods and hauled them out to the beach one day in 1885. "The young Hawaiian princes were in the water," a local paper wrote, "enjoying it hugely and giving interesting exhibitions of surfboard swimming as practiced in their native islands."
But Freeth, a \o7haole\f7 with one Hawaiian grandparent, helped rescue stand-up surfing from the Christianized sickness of 19th century Hawaiian culture, and he brought it to Redondo Beach. He had won fame on the islands as a talented young swimmer but was ambitious to see the world. After he taught an avid Jack London to surf in front of a hotel at Waikiki -- and after London wrote up the exotic art of "surf-bathing" for a magazine in 1907, describing Freeth in syrupy prose as a "handsome brown Mercury" -- the young man asked for a letter of introduction. London obliged, and by July 1907, Freeth was bound for North America.
Redondo Beach in 1907 was declining as an industrial harbor, and most of California's coastline consisted of wind-swept dunes. But wealthy men like Huntington wanted to develop. The Hotel Redondo had gone up in 1890, and a new arm of Huntington's light-rail line, the Pacific Electric, already stopped at Redondo Beach.
