SBHRF Interview by Leigh Sentenac with Sherry Liss Baum (July 15, 2025) LEIGH: The purpose of our interview is to capture the historical information related to your life in Seal Beach. Do I have permission to record our conversation and share the content for purposes of the Seal Beach Historical Resources Foundation? SHERRY: Yes, subject … Read more
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
The Historic Resources Foundation is pleased to announce we have begun digitizing copies of the Post & Wave, the town’s main newspaper from 1916 to the mid 1950s. We have obtained copies from nine different years between 1941 and 1955. We have done this in partnership with Newspaperarchives.com, one of the three largest companies which … Read more
Like most of Seal Beach’s beginnings, the history of the Bay Theatre has been shrouded in mystery and inaccuracy. Numerous newspaper articles had repeated the erroneous story that the theater’s origins went back to 1947. Fortunately, the growth of the Internet and the online proliferation of newspaper databases, and old movie magazines, (not to mention … Read more
The Seal Beach Historical Society and Red Car Museum disbanded in 2021 and removed all items that had previously been donated or acquired. In 2022 the Seal Beach City Council appointed a new Historic Resources Foundation whose mission was to preserve, share and celebrate the history of Seal Beach. In the past two years, the … Read more
William Taylor – Oral History – interviewed by Libby Appelgate William Taylor was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1918. In 1924 his father brought the family to Seal Beach so he could work in the oil fields on Signal Hill. When earthquake hit Seal Beach on March 10, 1933 at a magnitude of 6.4 at … Read more
Seal Beach Police Officer Sergeant Pat Sullivan was interviewed by Libby Appelgate for the 90th Founders Day celebration in 2005. Her articles were published in the Sun. “During the 1950’s the city had a population of about 1500 – 2000. The City of Seal Beach stopped at Coast Hwy. so you knew everybody and ran … Read more
This story ran in the Sun on February 2, 2018. Although uncredited, we suspect it was one of Elizabeth Kane’s many local profiles she prepared for the Sun. As Seal Beach residents gathered to hear an update on the Bay Theatre last week, few realized that seated among them was Libby Applegate, a former teacher … Read more
223 and 225 Main Street has been a happening place in Seal Beach for decades. In the 1960s it was best known
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