Newport Beach in the Rearview Mirror

The history of the Western Canners factory on the Balboa Peninsula —both the cannery, which opened in 1935, and later the iconic restaurant—is woven deeply into the fabric of Newport Beach history.

After churning out up to 5,000 cans of seafood daily (for humans and cats), the cannery closed in the 1960s, and then the historic property was saved twice: once in the early 1970s when retired engineer Bill Hamilton turned the closed factory site into the Cannery restaurant, and then again in 1999 when a history-minded businessman named Jack Croul (who never eaten at the Cannery before) paid three times the price for the property to stop bulldozers from knocking down the building to turn it into a condo project. 

After rescuing the historic site, Jack turned the beloved dining establishment over legendary restaurateur Ron Salisbury (now 93 and still active in daily operations), who tells us his incredible life story as well as the miraculous tale of how the Cannery was saved. 

Founded in 1948, the nationally renowned Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach has had many roles over the decades: a haunt for some of the biggest Hollywood stars, a stop for every Republican U.S. President since Dwight Eisenhower (Nixon even set up an office there complete with a hotline to the Kremlin), a venue for some of Newport's biggest charity events, and a refuge for families, professionals and others.

It's become as much a part of the city's fabric as the Balboa Pavilion, the Balboa Island Ferry, and the Wedge.

Here's the story about the origins of the storied Balboa Bay Club.

In the early-1960s, the Irvine Co. decided to build a relatively new type of residential community by creating an all-inclusive village that included a variety of housing types for different life stages and incomes, long ribbons of greenbelts, parks, a retail center, schools, and houses of worship.

The result was Eastbluff, one of Newport Beach's most beloved communities whose instant success inspired the Irvine Co.'s 22 villages in neighboring Irvine.

Guest: Mike Stockstill, former Irvine Co. executive and co-author of the book, "Transforming the Irvine Ranch."

“W.S. Collins: Balboa Island Visionary, Con Man or Both?” takes a deep dive into the life of the most intriguing figure in Newport history: W.S. Collins. 

The farsighted land speculator is best known for buying the entire Newport Beach townsite (almost all of the peninsula) in 1902. And for his next act, he created Balboa Island out of a tiny, mosquito-ridden mudflat.

But Collins also had a darker side that’s been rarely explored, whether it was literally trying to hang a second-grader in his first job as an teacher in Kansas, marrying five times, conducting shady business deals, or going bankrupt and leaving behind a partially (and poorly) developed Balboa Island along with an island full of angry residents. 

Looked at as a whole, Collins packed in an insane amount of living in his 88 years. In addition to his Newport exploits, he also was a citrus farmer, oilman, dealmaker, championship motorcyclist, early car enthusiast, speedboat champion, and serial entrepreneur, among other things. 

For our money, W.S. Collins is the most interesting person in Newport Beach history.

“W.S. Collins: Balboa Island Visionary, Con Man or Both?” takes a deep dive into the life of the most intriguing figure in Newport history: W.S. Collins. 

The farsighted land speculator is best known for buying the entire Newport Beach townsite (almost all of the peninsula) in 1902. And for his next act, he created Balboa Island out of a tiny, mosquito-ridden mudflat.

But Collins also had a darker side that’s been rarely explored, whether it was literally trying to hang a second-grader in his first job as an teacher in Kansas, marrying five times, conducting shady business deals, or going bankrupt and leaving behind a partially (and poorly) developed Balboa Island along with an island full of angry residents. 

Looked at as a whole, Collins packed in an insane amount of living in his 88 years. In addition to his Newport exploits, he also was a citrus farmer, oilman, dealmaker, championship motorcyclist, early car enthusiast, speedboat champion, and serial entrepreneur, among other things. 

For our money, W.S. Collins is the most interesting person in Newport Beach history.

For more than 50 years, the Collins Castle stood sentry over Newport Harbor. The concrete mansion once rivaled the stately Balboa Pavilion—five years its junior— for the attention of boaters on the bay. Located on tiny Collins Island, which is one of three islands that make up Balboa Island, the castle was built by Balboa Island's original developer, W.S. Collins, in the early 1910s and has been a part of Newport Beach lore ever since.

For decades, the beach in West Newport would occasionally disappear when storm waves stripped away the sand. In the 1930s, one storm wiped out the beach and sent several homes to Davy’s Locker. A later storm wiped out all  the oceanfront houses between 50th and 55th streets. 

The sand returned for a few decades, but in the early 1960s, the West Newport beach started to disappear again – and this time, Mother Nature wasn't giving the sand back. So solutions were offered – almost all of them completely bananas.

The favorite idea was to build a 1.5-mile-long breakwater from the Newport Pier to about 60th Street. Other kooky proposals included the construction of an underwater reef two miles long and making the sand radioactive so it could be easily traced. The latter plan actually happened.

With no agreed upon solution, by the late summer of 1968, West Newport was literally without a beach, and oceanfront homes stood on the precipice of a crumbling 10-foot-high sand cliff. So authorities hastily conducted a controversial experiment: place steel jetties at 40th Street and 44th Street to hold the sand in place. After promising results, six more jetties–these made of boulders–were placed from 56th and 28nd Street with the last one completed in 1973. In West Newport, the beach was back.

There’s no chunk of land in Newport Beach that’s more historic and has been more malleable than the Castaways. Its chameleon-like ability, enabled by its prime location overlooking the bay and ocean, has given the Castaways nine distinct lives–some historically critical, others largely forgotten, some lasting millions of years, others gone after less than a decade. The one thing they have in common: they are all fascinating. 

In 1909, W.S. Collins wanted to massively increase the footprint of his Balboa Island development. The land extension would have cut the width of Newport Harbor's main channel by more than half. 

In those days, the federal government had final approval of any plans for the harbor, so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent Captain D.E. Hughes to assess the situation. In just 960 words, he delivered a masterpiece of a report (part love letter, part manifesto) that amazingly predicted the future of Newport Beach and its harbor with great precision and beautifully laid out the argument that the harbor's waterways should be reserved for the people's enjoyment and not a developer's profits.

His observations killed Collins' plans for a super-sized Balboa Island and set the precedent that the harbor should be enjoyed by all. 

In 1984, the first swim test required to join Newport Beach's new junior lifeguard program drew all of three kids. Today, that number has soared to more than 1,500. In an insightful, revealing and occasionally emotional interview, Reenie Boyer–the pioneering female lifeguard and architect of Newport Beach Junior Lifeguards–talks about the origins and evolution of the most successful youth program in city history.