Seacliff State Beach

We rented a house on the bluff for many years and this was our view of the cement ship.

SS Palo Alto was a concrete ship built as a tanker at the end of World War I. She was built by the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company at the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Oakland, Ca.   She was launched on 29 May 1919, too late to see service in the war.   Her sister ship was the SS Peralta.
She was mothballed in Oakland until 1929, when she was bought by the Seacliff Amusement Corporation and towed to Seacliff State beach. A pier was built leading to the ship, and she was sunk a few feet in the water so her keel rested on the bottom. There she was refitted as an amusement ship, with amenities including a dance floor, a swimming pool and a café.
The company went bankrupt two years later and the ship cracked at the midsection. She was stripped of her fittings and left as a fishing pier . Eventually she deteriorated to the point where she was unsafe for even this use and was closed to the public. Today she remains at Seacliff Beach and serves as an artificial reef for marine life.

  

Here she is in 1947, the year before we started going there as a family camping on the 

beach in our trailer and tent.  The Seacliff State Beach still  has many camping spots 

right on the ocean.  We spent our Easter and summer holidays here and still do.

However we rent a house right on the beach to the right of the ship.

And we are going back this year.