Malibu, California
Malibu is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, about west of Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate, its strip of beaches stretching along the Pacific coast, and for its longtime status as the home of numerous Hollywood celebrities and executives with a high proportion of its residents in the entertainment industry. The Pacific Coast Highway traverses the city, following along the South Coast of California. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 10,654. The 2025 Palisades Fire devastated Malibu, with almost all of the beachfront homes near its center destroyed.
Nicknamed "The 'Bu" by surfers and locals, Malibu is noted for its beaches. The many parks within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area lie along the ridges above the city.
The city is bounded by the Santa Monica Mountains to the north, Topanga to the east, Solromar to the west, and the ocean to the south. The Malibu ZIP Code includes residents of the unincorporated canyon areas as it was assigned before the city incorporated.
History
The area is within the Ventureño Chumash territory, which extended from the San Joaquin Valley to San Luis Obispo to Malibu, as well as several islands off the southern coast of California. The Chumash called the settlement Humaliwo or "the surf sounds loudly". The city's name derives from this, as the "Hu" syllable is not stressed.Humaliwo was an important regional center in prehistoric times. The village, which is identified as CA-LAN-264, was occupied from approximately 2500 BCE. It was the second-largest Chumash coastal settlement by the Santa Monica Mountains, after Muwu. This pre-colonial village was next to Malibu Lagoon and is now part of the State Park.
Humaliwo was considered an important political center, but there were additional minor settlements in the area. One village, Ta'lopop, was a few miles up Malibu Canyon from Malibu Lagoon. Research shows that Humaliwo had ties to other pre-colonial villages, including Hipuk, Lalimanux and Huwam.
Conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo is believed to have moored at Malibu Lagoon, at the mouth of Malibu Creek, to obtain fresh water in 1542. The Spanish presence returned with the California mission system, and the area was part of Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit—a land grant—in 1802. Baptismal records list 118 individuals from Humaliwo. That ranch passed intact to Frederick Hastings Rindge in 1891. He and his wife, Rhoda May Knight Rindge, staunchly protected their land. After his death, May guarded their property zealously by hiring guards to evict all trespassers and fighting a lengthy court battle to prevent the building of a Southern Pacific railroad line through the ranch. Interstate Commerce Commission regulations would not support a railroad condemning property in order to build tracks that paralleled an existing line, so Frederick Rindge built his own railroad through his property first. He died, and May followed through with the plans, building the Hueneme, Malibu and Port Los Angeles Railway. The line started at Carbon Canyon, just inside the ranch property's eastern boundary, and ran 15 miles westward, past Pt. Dume.
Few roads even entered the area before 1929, when the state won another court case and built what is now known as the Pacific Coast Highway. By then May Rindge was forced to divide her property and begin selling and leasing lots. The Rindge house, known as the Adamson House, is now part of Malibu Creek State Park, between Malibu Lagoon State Beach and Surfrider Beach, beside the Malibu Pier that was used to provide transportation to/from the ranch, including construction materials for the Rindge railroad, and to tie up the family's yacht.
In 1926, in an effort to avoid selling land to stave off insolvency, May Rindge created a small ceramic tile factory. At its height, Malibu Potteries employed over 100 workers, and produced decorative tiles that furnish many Los Angeles-area public buildings and Beverly Hills residences. The factory, half a mile east of the pier, was ravaged by a fire in 1931. It partially reopened in 1932, but could not recover from the effects of the Great Depression and a steep downturn in Southern California construction projects. A distinct hybrid of Moorish and Arts and crafts designs, Malibu tile is considered highly collectible. Fine examples of the tiles may be seen at the Adamson House and Serra Retreat, a 50-room mansion that was started in the 1920s as the main Rindge home on a hill overlooking the lagoon. The unfinished building was sold to the Franciscan Order in 1942 and is operated as a retreat facility, Serra Retreat. It burned in the 1970 fire and was rebuilt using many of the original tiles.
Most of the Big Rock Drive area was bought in 1936 by William Randolph Hearst, who considered building an estate on the property. In 1944, he sold the lower half of his holdings there to Art Jones, one of Malibu's prominent early realtors, starting with the initial leases of Rindge land in Malibu Colony. He also owned or partly owned the Malibu Inn, Malibu Trading Post, and the Big Rock Beach Cafe. Philiip McAnany owned in the upper Big Rock area, which he purchased in 1919, and had two cabins there, one of which burned in a brush fire that swept through the area in 1959, and the other in the 1993 Malibu fire. McAnany Way is named after him. On January 7, 2025, the city was struck by a massive wildfire. With a lack of water, equipment and workers, the Los Angeles Fire Department was forced to start evacuating more than 30,000 citizens from the metropolitan area. Many homes were destroyed in Malibu, including most of the beach homes in the central part of the city. A few homes of well-known celebrities, including Paris Hilton's, were also affected by the fire.
Malibu Colony
Malibu Colony was one of the first areas with private homes after May Rindge opened Malibu to development in 1926. Frederick Rindge paid $10 an acre in 1890. One of Malibu's most famous districts, it is south of Malibu Road and the Pacific Coast Highway, west of Malibu Lagoon State Beach, east of Malibu Bluffs Park, and across from the Malibu Civic Center. May Rindge allowed Hollywood movie stars to build vacation homes in the Colony as a defensive public relations wedge against the Southern Pacific from taking her property under eminent domain for a coastal train route. The action forced the Southern Pacific to route its northbound line inland then return to the coast in Ventura. But her long legal battle to protect the Malibu coast was costly, and she died penniless. Long a popular private enclave for wealthy celebrities, the Malibu Colony is a gated community with multi-million-dollar homes on small lots. It has views of the Pacific, with coastline views stretching from Santa Monica and Rancho Palos Verdes on the south to the bluffs of Point Dume on the north.High technology in Malibu
The first working model of a laser was demonstrated by Theodore Maiman in 1960 in Malibu at the Hughes Research Laboratory. In the 1990s HRL Laboratories developed the FastScat computer code. TRW built a laboratory in Solstice Canyon without any structural steel to test magnetic detectors for satellites and medical devices.Incorporation
In 1991, most of the Malibu land grant was incorporated as a city to allow local control of the area. Prior to achieving municipal status, the local residents had fought several county-proposed developments, including an offshore freeway, a nuclear power plant, and several plans to replace septic tanks with sewer lines to protect the ocean from seepage that pollutes the marine environment. The incorporation drive gained impetus in 1986, when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved plans for a regional sewer that would have been large enough to serve 400,000 people in the western Santa Monica Mountains. Residents were incensed that they would be assessed taxes and fees to pay for the sewer project, and feared that the Pacific Coast Highway would need to be widened into a freeway to accommodate growth that they did not want. The supervisors fought the incorporation drive and prevented the residents from voting, a decision that was overturned in the courts.The city councils in the 1990s were unable to write a Local Coastal Plan that preserved enough public access to satisfy the California Coastal Commission, as required by the California Coastal Act. The state Legislature eventually passed a Malibu-specific law that allowed the Coastal Commission to write an LCP for Malibu, thus limiting the city's ability to control many aspects of land use. Because of the failure to adequately address sewage disposal problems in the heart of the city, the local water board ordered Malibu in November 2009 to build a sewage plant for the Civic Center area. The city council has objected to that solution. On February 2, 2007, Civic Center Stormwater Treatment Facility opened. On June 29, 2016, City of Malibu Civic Center Wastewater Treatment Facility, Phase 1, broke ground.
Geography
Malibu's eastern end borders the community of Topanga, which separates it from the city of Los Angeles. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of, over 99% of it is land.Malibu's dry brush chaparral and steep clay slopes make it prone to fires, floods, and mudslides.
Beaches on the Malibu coast include Big Rock Beach, Broad Beach, County Line Beach, Dan Blocker Beach, La Costa Beach, Las Flores Beach, Malibu Beach, Point Dume Beach, Surfrider Beach, Topanga Beach, and Zuma Beach. State parks and beaches on the Malibu coast include Leo Carrillo State Beach and Park, Malibu Creek State Park, Point Mugu State Park, and Robert H. Meyer Memorial State Beach, along with individual beaches such as El Matador Beach, El Pescador Beach, La Piedra Beach, Carbon Beach, Surfrider Beach, Westward Beach, and Escondido Beach. Paradise Cove, Pirates Cove, Trancas, and Encinal Bluffs are along the coast in Malibu. Point Dume forms the northern end of the Santa Monica Bay, and Point Dume Headlands Park affords a vista stretching to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Santa Catalina Island.
Like all California beaches, Malibu beaches are public below the mean high tide line. Many large public beaches are easily accessible, but such access is sometimes limited for some of the smaller and more remote beaches.
The Malibu Coast lies on the fringe of an extensive chaparral and woodland wilderness area, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Various environmental elements collectively create a recipe for natural disasters: the mountainous and geologically unstable terrain; seasonal rainstorms that result in dense vegetation growth; seasonal dry Santa Ana winds; and a naturally dry topography and climate.