President Richard Nixon's Not-So Covert War On Surfing At Trestles

“The trick to getting into Trestles was to drive to the bottom of a nearby arroyo, leave your car in the jungle of willows, then sneak down to the beach,” recounted Mike Doyle in his book “Morning Glass," offering more of a working man's account of the struggle. 

“If the Marines came while you were in the water, you could paddle so far out they couldn't get you, then turn north and paddle to San Clemente State Park, where they didn't have the authority to arrest you," he continued. "That really infuriated the Marines. Several times after I worked that trick on them, they fired their automatic weapons in the water all around me. Sometimes the bullets would hit as close as ten feet away. Other times I would come back to my car and find that they had slashed my tires. It was a real war between surfers and marines, and it went on for years.”

Over the years, a lot’s been made about the battles between the surfers and the M.P.s, most notably the relationship between SURFER magazine founder John Severson and “Tricky Dick.” In one of those weird twists of fate, Severson ended up living next-door to the president right about the same time he tapped into the era’s heady consciousness, psychedelic music and cannabis included.

Armed with his Century 1,000 lens, at one point early in their relationship, Severson snapped some photos of Nixon walking on the beach at Trestles and sold them to LIFE Magazine. The leader of the free world was none too happy and took an interest in what was going on at the Severson household. Phones were allegedly tapped, while Secret Service goons kept a keen on on the publisher’s movements.

“He was one tough cookie,” recounted Severson in “Surf,” his 2014 memoir. “I tough-cookied him right back.”

Eventually, the weight of the U.S. government and the Secret Service’s constant monitoring proved too much for Severson, who sold SURFER, pulled up stakes and moved to Maui to live the a more peaceful life as an artist.

And while it’s been commonly been assumed that surfing at Trestles was prohibited because Nixon was in office, that may not entirely be the case.

“Everybody thinks it was because of Nixon that surfing Trestles in the ’70s was illegal, but that’s not exactly the whole story,” says Jean “The Fly” Pierre Van Swae, who grew up building surfboards in the area and was married to one of Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison’s daughters. “Surfers were always ‘browning the train’ back then, and the folks at the railroad got together with the folks in the military, and that’s really what started the problems down there.”

By “browning the train” Van Swae clarifies that surfers were exposing their bare asses to the trains. Whatever the cause, surfing at Trestles was banned for a period, but once out of office in 1971, Nixon made amends and created the San Onofre State Park, protecting nearly three miles of exquisite Southern California coastline. Signing a 50-year lease with the State of California, that lease is currently being renegotiated by the federal government, state and other interested parties.