El Matador State Beach

This guide to El Matador State Beach in Los Angeles starts with what its name actually means, tracing back to Spanish settlers mapping the canyon above and correcting a common assumption about the beach's origin. It moves through the ancient seafloor rock the sandstone pillars are made of, and the decades when almost no one came here except Hollywood cinematographers and painters who knew the dirt path down at dawn. Take that same dirt path at first light for the view they were chasing.