There You Go: The Sunken City

The Sunken City is located in San Pedro, California. In 1929, cracks suddenly appeared near the coastline in a residential area of San Pedro and an entire neighborhood began a slow moving slide downwards toward the sea, in an occurance geologists call a slump. At its peak the slide moved eleven inches a day; however it took several years for it to complete and all but two houses were able to be moved to safety. What was left are the remnants of streets, sidewalks, streetcar tracks, and building foundations. The total area is around six acres in size and although they say the area has stabilized, parts of it still fall into the sea. Today the place is nominally closed off to the public, but it can be easily accessed. When I was there, I saw dozens of people, even a couple with a baby stroller! It's also heavily covered with graffiti, but in this case I think it adds to the overall post-apocalyptic ambience I felt from the place. I spent half the day there (I would have been there earlier but the morning was very foggy, I waited for it to lift by visiting other parts of San Pedro)and I have to say I met many people there while I was exploring and all were very friendly.

Walker's Cafe, near the edge. A great totally vintage cafe. The Sunken City lies beyond the fence.

Past the fence, looking back. Foundations of moved houses.

Walking along Paseo del Mar, a main street that suffers from parts of it sliding into the sea.

The road seems to end here. This is not the way to go down!

See what I mean?

More of the same cliff. The rim is about 130 feet above the sea. You have to be careful here!

Once you're in the Sunken City, weird landscapes come into view.

Large graffiti covered slabs of concrete on top of eroding earth are the norm here.

I wasn't the only person taking pictures that day.

I think this shows part of a street or something that got covered over and pushed towards the sea, where the elements continue to do their work.

Nice view of a fairly intact street, complete with curb.

You can see the former street here. I counted three parallel streets from the rim to the brink. This place is bigger than it looks.

This little hill reminds me of Skull Island, for some reason.

My favorite photo I took that day. I just think of post- apocalypse Badlands.

Looking down from the edge...the sea is still quite a ways down. And yes, people have fallen and died here.

From the same place, looking up...

End of the road, here.

Evidence of how the slump works. The earth just tears open (that hole is big enough to jump into).

The venom tree. My theory is the tree existed before the slide and was pushed into its current postion. The horizontal graffiti covered limbs once was the bulk of the tree and stood upright, and in the years since the tree has regrown in its new upright position.