The iconic Laguna Beach lifeguard tower that started out as part of a gas station across from Main Beach might not be in use today if it weren’t for the locals who did their best to save it.

Fifty years after a Laguna Beach City Council decided to not move forward with a more modern facility, the tower is represented on the community’s police, fire and lifeguard badges. Its image is featured on souvenirs and postcards and it has likely been photographed millions of times.

For just those reasons, Beth Leeds, a longtime community activist known in town for lending a hand to saving much of what makes Laguna Beach unique, is planning a celebration on Saturday, Jan. 1, at Main Beach recognizing the tower’s lasting significance, five decades after it was saved from demolished.

“It’s the new year 2022, and I thought it would be a positive thing to tell people about how it was saved 50 years ago,” the 80-year-old said, adding she will be holding the event at noon. “I want to honor it.”

The tower had been moved to Main Beach in 1937 using a horse carriage after it was removed from a Union gas station across the street.

Leeds recounted how she learned of the then 35-year-old tower’s proposed demolition on a City Council agenda in 1972. “I had to stop it.”

Dozens of residents who hated the idea of a new lifeguard tower rallied against the plan.

Calling the existing tower old and dilapidated, the city, Leeds said, had a new version ready to show. It was a “modern, tinted-glass monstrosity,” she said.

At the council meeting, she jumped up calling for those in the audience to raise their hands if they supported saving the old tower.

Dale Ghere, a Laguna Beach lifeguard from 1960 to 1974, said he doesn’t recall the council meeting, but he does remember an effort by then Lifeguard Chief Skip Connors, who had designs on building a “major tower.”

The concept of a new lifeguard facility came as Main Beach Park was being planned and businesses and other structures on the ocean side of the street were being removed.

“When they scrapped all the buildings off, he wanted to put a major lifeguard building there and get rid of the round tower,” Ghere said.

Ann Christoph, a local landscape architect and Laguna Beach historian, also recalls plans for the new tower, which she called “quite overwhelming.”

“It was more like an air traffic control tower,” she said, recalling the proposed design by architect Fred Griggs. “When people started hearing about it, they were quite unhappy.”

Christoph, of South Laguna, became aware of the tower discussion because the landscape firm she worked for was involved with new landscape plans for Main Beach Park where the tower was located.

After its demolition was dropped, it was years still before the tower would see much renovation.

Mostly, the lifeguards were responsible for its maintenance through the 1990s. Ghere said in some years he had 16-year-old kids painting it. The rest of the work was done in bits and pieces with patches here and there, he said. New windows and roofs were added.

The tower also now has three stories.

When it was first moved to the beach, the ground floor was used as a first aid station and the second story for watching the ocean and shoreline. It had a telephone board that connected to lifeguards at other city beaches manning much smaller towers.

Through the ’70s, lifeguards dug out the sand and used the space below the first floor to store surfboards and other things. There was even a shower. Eventually, that space was improved with a wooden floor and plastered walls.

“It was like digging a room under a front porch,” Ghere said.

The tower’s latest remodel occurred in 2002. During the final phase, the contractor uncovered two portholes on the side of the building where clocks were being replaced. The portholes had been covered during some of the 1970s restorations and were determined to be significant architectural features.

The city worked with local historical preservationists to highlight the portholes rather than cover them up again.

“It’s almost a total remodel of what it was when it came over from the gas station,” Ghere said. “I don’t know if any boards in it are what was in the old tower. But, everyone likes the original shape.”

“I don’t think there is a more iconic emblem for Orange County that supersedes the lifeguard tower,” he added. “Except maybe Disneyland.”

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