Malibu, California

Malibu ( ; ; ) is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, United States, 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 several of its residents in the entertainment industry. The Pacific Coast Highway (State Route 1) 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 in the east of the city being destroyed.

Nicknamed "The 'Bu" by surfers and locals, 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 (Point Mugu). 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 (in Westlake Village), Lalimanux (by Conejo Grade) and Huwam (in Bell Canyon).

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. (a National Register of Historic Places site and California Historical Landmark), 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 (now Moonshadows restaurant). 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 (formerly a state 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 (known locally as the Queen's Necklace) 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 (now known as HRL Laboratories LLC). 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 (as cities under California law, they are not subject to the same level of county government oversight). 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 (LCP) 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

thumb|The Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in central Malibu

thumb|The Paradise Cove pier in Malibu

thumb|Residential developments in the mountains above Malibu coast

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.

thumb|View from Malibu Bluffs Park, facing west toward Point Dume

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.

Wildfires

thumb|left|Looking down on the Corral Canyon brush fire from Latigo Canyon Road

thumb|left|The smoke plume from the [[Woolsey Fire, seen from the Pacific Coast Highway]]

The Malibu coast has seen dozens of wildfires:

• October 26, 1929 – Malibu Colony, 13 homes burned.
• October 14, 1985 – "Piuma," Las Flores area, Topanga Canyon, . The 1993 firestorm was composed of two separate fires, one ravaging most of central Malibu/Old Topanga, and another, larger fire affecting areas north of Encinal Canyon. Three people died and 739 homes destroyed in the central Malibu/Old Topanga blaze. were torched in the north Malibu fire, with no deaths and few homes destroyed in the less densely populated region. Los Angeles County Fire Department officials announced suspicions that the fire was started by arson. The fire and widespread damage to properties and infrastructure resulted in the City of Malibu adopting the strictest fire codes in the country.
• October 21, 1996 – "Calabasas," Malibu Canyon Corridor, Brush fire ignited by arcing power line, .
• January 6, 2003 – "Trancas", Trancas Canyon, .
• January 8, 2007 – At about 5:00 pm a fire started in the vicinity of Bluffs Park, south of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. The fire hit near the Colony area, burning down four houses on Malibu Road, including the oceanfront home of Step By Step star Suzanne Somers. The Los Angeles County Fire Department announced that a discarded cigarette stub started the blaze.
• October 21, 2007 – At about 5:00 am a fire started off of Malibu Canyon Road. As of 1:00 pm there were 500+ personnel on scene. burned with no containment. 200+ homes were evacuated. Five homes were confirmed to have been destroyed, with at least nine others damaged. Two commercial structures were completely destroyed. Castle Kashan and the Malibu Presbyterian Church were both destroyed.
• November 24, 2007 – The "Corral Fire" destroyed 53 homes, damaged 35, and burned over , forcing as many as 14,000 people to evacuate. Damages from the fire were expected to reach more than $100 million. The blaze originated at the top of Corral Canyon, where a group of young people who were in closed parkland after dusk had started a bonfire despite the presence of high Santa Ana winds. The individuals responsible for starting the fire were later identified, and are the subject of ongoing civil and criminal litigation.
• November 8, 2018 – The Woolsey Fire, a wildfire that burned from November 8–21 that burned and destroyed 1,500 structures and left 341 buildings damaged. The fire also resulted in 3 firefighter injuries and 3 civilian fatalities. In 2020, authorities blamed faulty Southern California Edison equipment for the blaze.
• December 9, 2024 – The Franklin Fire began shortly after 10:00 pm on December 9 near Malibu Canyon Road. The fire spread quickly under strong Santa Ana winds, burning a total of over the next few days. The fire prompted mandatory evacuations for much of Malibu and destroyed a total of 19 structures.
• January 7, 2025 – The January 2025 Southern California wildfires caused deaths, evacuations, and heavy damage to homes and property, including in Malibu. The Palisades Fire began around 10:30 a.m. on January 7 and initially burnt nearly between Santa Monica and Malibu. The uncontrollable blaze, which continued to consume buildings, has wound up burning more than between the two beach towns.

Mudslides

One of the most problematic side effects of the fires that periodically rage through Malibu is the destruction of vegetation, which normally provides some degree of topographical stability to the loosely packed shale and sandstone hills during periods of heavy precipitation. Rainstorms following large wildfires can thus cause mudslides, in which water-saturated earth and rock moves quickly down mountainsides, or entire slices of mountainside abruptly detach and fall downward.

After the 1993 wildfire stripped the surrounding mountains of their earth-hugging chaparral, torrential rainstorms in early 1994 caused a massive mudslide near Las Flores Canyon that closed down the Pacific Coast Highway for months. Thousands of tons of mud, rocks, and water rained down on the highway. The destruction to property and infrastructure was exacerbated by the road's narrowness at that point, with beachside houses abutting the highway with little or no frontage land as a buffer to the mudslide. Another large mudslide occurred on Malibu Canyon Road, between the Pepperdine University campus and HRL Laboratories LLC, closing down Malibu Canyon for two months. Yet another behemoth slide occurred on Kanan Dume Road, about up the canyon from the Pacific Coast Highway. This closure lasted many months, with Kanan finally fixed by the California Department of Transportation (Cal-Trans) over a year after the road collapsed.

Mudslides can occur at any time in Malibu, whether a recent fire or rainstorm has occurred or not. Pacific Coast Highway, Kanan Dume Road, and Malibu Canyon Road, as well as many other local roads, have been prone to many subsequent mudslide-related closures. During any period of prolonged or intense rain, Caltrans snowplows patrol most canyon roads in the area, clearing mud, rocks, and other debris from the roads. Such efforts keep most roads passable, but it is typical for one or more of the major roads leading into and out of Malibu to be temporarily closed during the rainy season.

Storms

Malibu is periodically subject to intense coastal storms. Occasionally, these unearth remnants of the Rindge railroad that was built through Malibu in the early 20th century.

On January 25, 2008, during an unusually large storm for Southern California, a tornado came ashore and struck a naval base's hangar, ripping off the roof. It was the first tornado to strike Malibu's shoreline in recorded history.

Earthquakes

Malibu is within of the San Andreas Fault, a fault over long that can produce an earthquake over magnitude 8. Several faults are in the region, making the area prone to earthquakes.

The 1971 Sylmar earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake (magnitudes 6.6 and 6.7, respectively) shook the area. Smaller earthquakes happen more often.

Climate

This region experiences warm and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above . According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Malibu has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. The city's climate is influenced by the Pacific Ocean, resulting in far more moderate temperatures than locations further inland experience. Snow in Malibu is extremely rare, but flurries with higher accumulations in the nearby mountains occurred on January 17, 2007. More recently, snow fell in the city on January 25, 2021. The record high temperature of was observed on September 27, 2010, while the record low temperature of was observed on January 14, 2007.

| source 2 = Records: MSN

Demographics