Gail and Levi Swift say they will never sell their little yellow cottage with white trim and a red brick porch in Sunset Beach. On Saturday, July 27, the Swifts had friends over to celebrate the cottage’s 100 birthday. The cottage, which really is two smaller cottages that were later joined with a passageway, was built in 1913 by Gail Swift’s great grandfather Henry Pierce.
“He worked for the municipal water district,” Levi Swift said. “The water district went bankrupt and Henry was given 26 lots as back pay.”
At the time, hardly anyone predicted that the Sunset Beach’s lots would be worth what they are now. The area was still very young. Sunset Beach was established as an unincorporated area of Orange County in 1905. It was developed as a result of the 1920 discovery of oil in the fields of Huntington Beach. The area that now contains real estate worth millions was annexed by Huntington Beach in 2011.
Henry Pierce built the modest cottages for his family at the site of what is now the address of 16908 North Pacific, Sunset Beach. Later in life, Pierce developed glaucoma and he sold off the rest of the lots to support himself.
Levi Swift explained that the cottages were built using the old-fashioned single board construction.
“They used clear-cut, old growth redwood,” he said. “You can’t get it any longer. The only place they have it now is in the National Parks.”
Sitting between 9th and 10th streets, the building remains an icon in the community.
“People have been stopping by all day to say ‘hello’ and celebrate the cottage,” Gail Swift said.
When she was a young girl, Swift said, she would visit the cottage with her family during summer vacations. Her parents would bring her to Sunset Beach from their home in Bakersfield.
“There are a lot of memories of those summer days,” Swift said with a giggle. “If these walls could talk, we’d all be in trouble now.”
By then the two cottages had been joined by the area that now serves as the kitchen. Trains ran down the length of what became the greenbelt in Sunset Beach.
“I remember the house shaking when the train went by the front yard,” Swift said. “I remember the iceman delivering ice to us here.”
The house used to have two pull chain toilets back then. They are gone now, replaced by more modern conveniences. Also gone is the Hopalong Cassidy linoleum on the floor.
The home has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It used to have a third bedroom but that is used for storage now.
From 1985 to 1991 Gail Swift lived in the home fulltime when she was a single mother raising her two daughters Gwen Ertoz and Cynthia Khatib. When they were girls in Sunset Beach, her daughters attended the local schools.
The Swifts live in Petaluma now and visit Sunset Beach when they can. When they are not in town, one of the six children between she and Levi are able to use the cottages.
Visiting the cottage with the Swifts were Mac and Francesca Smith from Petaluma.
They stayed at the cottage when they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Also in town for the celebration, the Swifts friends Jerry and Alona Thomas of Sacramento stopped by the cottage.
“This is a little treasure by the beach,” Francesca Smith said.
Gail Swift said the cottages might also become part of a walking tour of historic Sunset Beach buildings that is in the planning stage.
Meanwhile, she said they intend to keep the cottage in the family.
“That is the way my mother wanted it, for nobody to ever change it,” she said.
