Keeping history alive is not without expenses. Preserving the collection, purchasing archival materials, helping researchers, and planning programs are expensive endeavors — even more so when doing it in a way where exhibits can be displayed not just in Old Town but in other parts of the city as well. Saving history comes at a price, but consider the alternative – without your donations, so much would be lost forever.
Join the Foundation
Becoming a member will aid us in our mission to preserve, promote, and celebrate Seal Beach’s history and cultural heritage, and to ensure its preservation for future generations. Your support is vitally important to preserving our past and securing our future. The Seal Beach Historic Resources Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, and your financial donation is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Donate
There are many ways to give and support the work of preserving and disseminating local history. You can make a direct donation online or via mail. You can make a gift “in honor of” or “in memory of” a family member or friend with your donation. If your employer conducts a matched giving campaign, consider designating the SBHRF as the recipient for your contributions, and make your gift doubly meaningful. You can set up a monthly sustaining donation through your bank or credit card. Or, by sharing your love of Seal Beach history and remembering the SBHRF in your estate plans and joining our Legacy Guild, you can leave an enduring legacy of connecting people to the past and to the place they live by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the material history of Seal Beach.
Your contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law: SBHRF Tax ID #88-1864669
Sponsor a Project
We welcome sponsorships of our exhibitions and programs. For example, you can choose to sponsor a photograph or artifact in our exhibitions – your name will be listed next to the item. Or, you can elect to designate your funds to help the entire project.
- Local Newspaper Digitization Project – of value to historians, the curious, the nostalgic and even family historians. Not just the Sun, but the Journal, the Mariner, and prior to 2000 the News-Enterprise competed with the Journal/Sun for the Seal Beach audience and even printed Seal Beach editions for many years. We are working with Newspaper Archive, and other community groups in Los Alamitos and Rossmoor to not only share the costs of this project, but increase the local awareness of the Foundation.
- Education Outreach Project – working with local schools to make them children more aware of our local history. This may include special print materials, a Seal Beach Historical Parade, field trips and more.
- Surfing Seal Beach – Seal Beach has a rich and storied history in the world of surfing. Although the beach towns to the south get more notice, our little burg hosted the first surfing activities in the country. As far back as 1912, the Bayside Land Company was promoting surfing competitions and using surfboard riders in their newspaper ads. Then of course after World War II, the crew of surfers who hung out near Blackie and Pat August’s beach house at 13th Street revolutionized the sport. In the 1950s the Haley Brothers won the first two national surfing championships, then Rich Harbour started shaping his legendary boards, Harry Severson started Surfing magazine, Bruce Brown began his cinema career and Endless Summer, and Sean Collins started Surfline.
We’d like to put together an exhibition celebrating the sport and the town’s integral role in its development.
- Seal Beach Women — In 1942, Jessie Reed became the first woman mayor in Orange County, but even before that and certainly after, the town has always had a history of strong women. Mildred Blankenship (SB’s most successful landlord among other things in the 1920s and 30s), Virginia Haley, Norma Gibbs (Mayor in 1920), Pat August, The Bell Sisters (famous singers of the early 1950s) , Gwen Forsythe, Patty Campbell, Carla Watson, Nancy Kredell, Libby Applegate, Sally Hirsch, Ellery Deaton. Do you know of any others?
- Save the Red Car! – The Seal Beach Lion’s Club saved the Red Car and has been working to preserve it ever since. On April 23, 2023, the entire community will come together to witness and celebrate the transfer of the Red Car from the Seal Beach Lion’s Club to the Seal Beach Historic Resources Foundation. Through a Red Car Committee, the two Seal Beach organizations will work together to repair, restore and preserve this historical landmark for our community and visitors to enjoy far into the future. Your donation will be earmarked for the Red Car only
- Seal Beach in the Movies – From the Silents to American Sniper, Seal Beach has been used as a location for many films as far back as 1915, maybe earlier. Anaheim Bay and Alamitos Bay have stood in for many seaside towns, (and even Babylonian Kingdoms). And of course, the sand dunes near Surfside were used for the race to the Red Sea in the 1923 production of The ten Commandments. (Sorry, but the rest was shot at Nipomo Dunes near San Luis Obispo). In any case, we are on a mission to put together the most comprehensive list and exhibition of Seal Beach related cinema and video.
- CLASS ACT – Class photos for Zoeter (SB Elementary originally) and McGaugh are all over Facebook, but at many different sites that may elude those who would love to see old friends and classmates. Our goal is to get them here, in one easy-to-find place.