Featured on LA Times and LAist best books of 2024!

Walking on the pier, one can simultaneously experience the fantastic reality of wind, waves, sand, and creaking wooden decks, and travel back in time to the simple pleasures of the carousel and its timeless amusement.

— Robert Redford

Celebrate a century of good times on the Santa Monica Pier, with the revised edition of Santa Monica Pier: America’s Last Great Pleasure Pier! Vintage images and magnificent color photos capture this beloved international icon at its very best, now updated with more images and information than ever before. Its dramatic story of survival —fighting Mother Nature, politics and changing times—makes Santa Monica Pier more than a landmark, more than a pleasure pier or a must see on the West Coast. Santa Monica Pier is a slice of American history to be enjoyed again and again and again.

Santa Monica Pier historian Jim Harris has brought together a commemorative collection of colorful artwork, fascinating history, and amazing lore, which invites anyone who has ever enjoyed the Pier to revisit its past and contemplate its future. Filled with stories and history that will delight and educate, it is a true love letter to the Santa Monica Pier.

With a foreword by Robert Redford, who fought to save the pier during the turbulent 1970s, and an afterword by Arnold Schwarzenegger, an icon of Muscle Beach, this book is not to be missed. The updated and expanded edition is the definitive title for history and information on a Southern California gem, and the closest you can get to going to the pier without actually being there!