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speculators sued Mrs. Fernald and her accomplices, of course, but no oil
wells ever blackened the beach at Miramar.
In the 1920s, the Miramar Hotel subdivided the beach and bluffs
west of the hotel and sold the lots for vacation homes. Cottages rose above
the high tide on stilts and were set back against the bluffs. Many of today’s
beach homes are recognizable in early photos.
Trouble was on the horizon, however. George Owen Knapp developed
a beach resort called Edgecliff at the western point of the shallow cove
that makes up Miramar Beach. Two groins captured sand for his club but
reduced the sand drifting down to Miramar. That same year, the city began
construction on the Santa Barbara Harbor, which was completed in 1929.
The interference with the littoral drift proved disastrous for the
Miramar and Harold S. Doulton filed lawsuits. He lost his case against
the city, but won his case against Edgecliff. The groins were dynamited in
1941. It was too late for the Doultons, however, as the Depression had put
an end to their ownership of the Miramar. In 1939, Paul Gawzner bought
the hotel at auction. He reoriented the hotel toward the highway, painted
the cottages white and added blue roofs to create the Miramar Hotel that
generations still remember.
The Gawzner Years
In the 1940s, Paul Gawzner removed the pier and replaced the
beachfront cabañas with one-story cottages connected by a boardwalk. Each
cottage also had a small lawn area. During WWII, the Army Ground and
Service Forces (AG & SF) commandeered the Miramar, along with several
other area hotels, as a Redistribution Station. Soldiers returning from the
battlefronts of Europe and the Pacific received a furlough here. Oscar
Overaa of Posilipo Lane was a block warden for the area and patrolled
the beach each night, making sure the dim-out was enforced. It was a
frustrating job, for no sooner had he ensured that the lights were out all the
way to the Edgecliff, when they came back on during his return journey.
By the late 1930s, Miramar Beach had 250 changing rooms and a beach
snack bar; the pier disappeared in the mid-1940s (photo courtesy of Harold
K. Doulton Family)
The Gawzner family removed the cabañas and the pier and built cottages and a
boardwalk constructed from the remains of the pier in the late 40s (photo courtesy of
Santa Barbara Historical Society)
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