Flood Control
From the 1910s and throughout the 1930s, Flood Control had been a prime spot for surf. In California Surfriders, 1946, Doc Ball, surfing’s first dedicated photographer, wrote glowingly of the waves at Flood Control.[6] Doc was not the only one to hold Flood Control in high regard. “Flood Control was an excellent right that used to break where the Queen Mary is now on any good-size swell. It was rideable up to 15 to 20 feet. In September of 1939 we rode a huge chubasco-driven swell that was pushing over 15 feet. Ted Sizemore (an excellent surfer of the time and a Long Beach lifeguard) said that on a good south swell they had more rescues along parts of Long Beach than anywhere else on the Southern California coast. But during the war we all went away and they built the breakwater. There wasn’t much we could do about it."
