Sunken City’s Cliffside Ruins Above the Pacific in San Pedro

Sunken City occupies a stretch of collapsed bluff at Point Fermin in San Pedro, a Los Angeles neighborhood at the tip of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. A 1929 landslide fractured the streets and foundations of what had been a residential subdivision, dropping chunks of pavement and building slabs toward the shoreline and prompting the city to condemn the land. Geologists attribute the ongoing slippage to unstable shale and sandstone layers beneath the bluffs, a movement that continues today at a slow but measurable pace. Los Angeles kept the area fenced off for decades before opening it to the public in 2016 under a supervised-access program. The breakwater visible offshore shelters the Port of Los Angeles, one of the busiest container ports in the country.

Photo taken in December 2011.