Family Selling Bruce’s Beach Property Back to L.A. County for $20 Million

Bruce’s Beach, an oceanfront property in Southern California that was taken from Black owners in the Jim Crow era and returned to their descendants last year, will be sold back to Los Angeles County for nearly $20 million, county officials said Tuesday.

Family members of the original landowners, Willa and Charles Bruce, agreed to sell the land back to L.A. County and have informed the board of their decision.

“The seizure of Bruce’s Beach nearly a century ago was an injustice inflicted upon not just Willa and Charles Bruce but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires,” Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement.

The Bruce family received the official deed last year, 98 years after the property was taken by the city of Manhattan Beach.

Willa and Charles Bruce purchased the land in 1912 for $1,225 and built several facilities, including a cafe and changing rooms. The resort became a popular tourist attraction that offered Black families a place to enjoy the California life, but the family faced intimidation and racial threats from White neighbors and the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1924, Manhattan Beach took the property citing eminent domain and paid the couple a fraction of what they asked for. The Bruces left and died just five years later.

Bruce’s Beach is now a park with a lawn and lifeguard training facility.

Hahn said she fought hard to return the property to the Bruce family because she “wanted to right this wrong,” and supports their decision.

“This is what reparations look like and it is a model I hope governments across the country will follow,” Hahn said in the statement.