Malibu Pier

This guide to Malibu Pier in Los Angeles follows Rhoda May Rindge, widowed and facing Southern Pacific's plan to run a coastal railroad through her family's thirteen-thousand-acre ranch. It traces the loophole in federal railroad law that let her finish her late husband's private railway to block the route, and the pier she built in 1905 so a steam crane could load cattle hides and walnuts onto waiting boats. The pier opened to the public in 1934, then a wartime storm tore off its far end while the Coast Guard was still using it as a lookout post.