In the early part of the 20th century, before it tangled with the CA-DOT, Castle Rock was one of several tourist attractions touted along the Santa Monica Bay coast. Today an elite neighborhood of estates looking over the seaside and the beautiful Pacific Pallisades sunsets, Castlemarre was originally built as a subdivision of fancy seaside Italian villias, complete with a series of stairways, sidewalks and a bridge over the PCH, which was a paltry 25 feet wide at the time, but a treacherous crossing nonetheless!.

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The neighborhood not only boasted a genuine villa, built by none other than the Getty family, but also many trappings of a typica mediterranian seaside village. The remains of the seaside promenade can still be seen along the highway today, plunging into flows of mud that have covered it. One can see some views of its original appearance in the photos here.noticing that it ran from the northern seaside end of the neightborhood to the shopping center at its center (now the home of Paulist Productions), and eventually winding back up around the southerne end of the hillside.

Now the only real remaining trace of Castle Rock itself today is the beach beneath it, which still retains the name, even though the namesake itself is long since hauled away. Some accounts have claimed that the rocks on the beach now are the remains of that main rock, but comparing these images to the beach today shows that only the main conical formation above the roadway was leveled, and in the time since the space it occupied has been paved and equipped with a handrail. Irony? DOT calling.

One account has it that the removal of Castle Rock was done for practical reasons:

And then just before what is now the turnoff for the Getty Museum we pass Castle Rock. Castle Rock was a landmark, a tall rock pinnacle alongside the highway, and fun to climb on. It was removed some fifty years ago to stop the constant flow of pebbles and gravel it deposited on the road for cars to run over. The beach is still called Castle Rock.

Too bad, it seems like this particular rock could've easily been spared. At the time it was taken out, (the mid-50's) the coast road was already bursting, but talk of the Pacific Coast Freeway were only beginning.

Some of the images on this page are from the Santa Monica Public Library