Larry Strawther 
In Spring 1939 the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce began a campaign to reclaim the city’s lawful ownership of the title “the safest beach in California.” The campaign included calling out both Manhattan Beach and Carpinteria who also claimed the title via newspaper articles, sternly-worded letters to editors making the claim that nobody had ever … Read more
By Larry Strawther One of our first goals for the Historic Resources Foundation was to acquire and make available to the community digitized copies of old Seal Beach newspapers. We are happy to announce progress on that front. In addition to digitizing some early issues of the Seal Beach Surf & Sun and The Mariner earlier … Read more
One of the goals of the SBHRF is to provide a home for old Seal Beach newspapers, and them to digitize them and make them available to all. This week we are adding two early issues of the Seal Beach Surf and Sun – a paper started in 1960 by Jerry Brockman, the owner of … Read more
With Summer unofficially kicking off with the Memorial Day weekend, the month of May has always been a happening time for Seal Beach. Check out these unique moments in Seal Beach History. May 1913 – Pacific Electric crews begin grading Ocean Ave in preparation for the new trolley rail line that will run from a … Read more
The iconic Seal Beach Red Car formally started a new chapter in its storied history on April 23 with the official transfer of the car’s ownership from the Seal Beach Lions to the recently formed Seal Beach Historic Resources Foundation. Lions President Scott Weir and SBHRF President Deb Machen both inked the contract memorializing the … Read more
This article originally ran on October 22, 2010 in the Seal Beach Sun, and submitted by the College Park East Neighborhood Association (CPENA). Editor’s note: The following account of the history of College Park East in Seal Beach is presented here in honor of the Founders Day coverage the Sun has been publishing. This article … Read more
In the first week of April 1926 a Seal Beach resident also known as the Cheyenne Chief Mad Wolf presided at a ceremony where A.R. Glancy, president of the Oakland Motor Company, was made an honorary Algonquin chief for naming a motorcar after the great Chief Pontiac. A photo and a newspaper article ran in … Read more
[THIS IS A SAMPLE POST. It will be polished up] The Seal Beach Historical Foundation is in talks with the Newspaper Archive company, the Sun and other local papers to digitize back issues and make them available for viewing online. The plan is to make them available to anyone who purchases a one-year membership in … Read more
Preserving Seal Beach History has often been a tricky proposition. For starters many of those involved with the early days of the town did not leave a lot of their records in easily accessible places, or in easy-to-find filing systems — understandable, I suppose, since much of Seal Beach’s early history involved multiple failed real … Read more
This was originally written as part of a series of articles celebrating the 2015 Seal Beach Centennial. I have changed it slightly to nail down some dates (changing “Last year” to 2013, for example.) 2013 marked the 100th anniversary of the actual naming of Seal Beach (changed from Bay City in August 1913), and 2014 … Read more