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Salt Creek Beach Video

 

 

 


 

Salt Creek Beach Orange County Beaches California

 

Salt Creek Beach is a popular beach for youth, teens, families and adults. But most of all, it's a place kids love to go to see and be seen by their classmates and friends.  In the photos are a mellow beach crowd on this approx. one mile stretch of smooth, comfortable sand.

 

Salt Creek Beach is at the bottom of a hill and base of a cliff beneath the five diamond Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.  Clean, welcoming  and a family environment teenagers from Mission Viejo, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, San Juan Capistrano and nearby cities love, the beach is one of our favorites in all of Orange County. Similar to Seal Beach's family friendly beaches, the two also share another attribute, fine sand.

 

The lesser publicized Salt Creek Beach, operated by Orange County (California) Parks, is listed with an address in Dana Point. Yet the parks system refers to it as being located between Laguna Beach and Dana. The traffic moves rapidly along this stretch of Pacific Coast Highway where the beach parking lot is located, so look for something unexpected...a lighthouse designed tower and parking lot of shopping center quality on the west side of the highway.

 

Like Montage Resort and its on-location public Treasure Island Beach nearby, Salt Creek is a well-maintained beach with pristine sand, aqua-colored waters, nice parking facilities and tidepools.

 

If history had played out in a slightly different manner, the public would not be enjoying Salt Creek Beach today. As you wander down a paved path from the parking facilities under an overpass bridge, a plaque along the green grass lawns of the park commemorates a man named William Merritt Wilcoxen. He tirelessly fought to save the beach during 1969 to 1972, according to the plaque. Laguna Niguel Corporation, then AVCO Community Developers acquired beach property in 1968 that was slated for housing.  "Save Salt Creek" succeeded in creating this treasure that on one side faces expensive mansions, and on the other, the 393-room luxury Ritz-Carlton resort.


On February 2, 1971, the Orange County Board of Supervisors signed an agreement for a $2.6 million land purchase and construction of beach park. Completed in 1976, the public beach has greeted millions of guests, served countless hamburgers at the Salt Creek Concessions and rented thousands of body boards for tourists on vacation.

Love of this beach is second nature to kids who've grown up and enjoyed summers on the sand or in the water surfing, body boarding and swimming.

 

 

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