The Wedge has always had a way of blowing our minds. This time, a very powerful swell from Hurricane Marie has done more than deliver bone-crushing waves—it has peeled back decades of sand and exposed a piece of Newport Beach history.
With the sand dramatically scoured away, the remnants of the fabled old Wedge Pier construction is now visible, giving us all an extremely rare look at infrastructure that has been hidden beneath the sand for many years.
“It’s getting cowboy down at Wedge! Still three months of our swell window to go. Kind of exciting to see all this Wedge history, also a little scary,” states the caption of the post.
The video also shows us an archived aerial image of what the shoreline used to look like, helping further illustrate the Wedge’s long and heavily engineered past.
It’s a pretty wild sight. One day you’re looking at the familiar stretch of sand at one of Southern California’s most famous surf spots, and the next you’re essentially staring at an archaeological dig site.
While massive swells are nothing new at the Wedge, they can occasionally show us something completely out of left field—including a not-so little piece of the this treachorous wave’s storied past.