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This pier sheltered intake pipes owned by the Olympic Salt Water Company; it jutted out 600 feet off of Ocean Beach, with cast-iron pipes carrying water to a reservoir on Laurel Heights. Because bathing directly in the Pacific was too cold for most, late nineteenth-century entrepreneurs built "plunges" at beachfront amusement parks and hotels and urban baths, used heated salt water pools of various sizes. In CA, electric trolley companies and railroads often financed large salt water pools as terminal destination points, designed to entice people to travel significant distances on their lines. Sea water pumped into public swimming pools was routinely filtered, but pollution from sewage and other sources ended its use in the 1930s; Brookline, MA, had the first chlorinated public pool in 1887, and gradually thereafter waterworks engineers began using chlorinated water for potable water and swimming pools. Chlorinated pools became commonplace after 1910, reinforced by medical journals that urged water sterilization measures to protect public health. (See "History of Chlorine as a Swimming Pool Sanitizer,"Accessed 05/16/2014.)

The pier was to the south of the Cliff House #1, that burned on Christmas Day, 1895.

Demolished; the pier was gone by the mid-1960s.

PCAD id: 19215