Sunset Over the Pacific from San Pedro’s Coastal Bluffs

San Pedro sits on the Palos Verdes Peninsula at the southern edge of Los Angeles, where bluff-top parkland drops sharply to the Pacific. The community was once its own city, incorporated in 1888, before merging with Los Angeles in 1909 to secure control of the harbor. That harbor is now the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere, though the cliffs above it remain largely undeveloped and open to the public. On clear days the bluffs offer sightlines west to Santa Catalina Island, some twenty-two miles offshore.

Photo taken in December 2011.