Quick Take
Three years after storms significantly damaged amenities at Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, major rebuilding efforts won’t break ground until at least 2028, with larger projects unlikely before 2030.
The road to recovery is long at Seacliff State Beach.
Powerful swells and high tides during the 2023 winter storms devastated the Aptos beach, damaging the now-demolished pier leading to the SS Palo Alto “cement ship” and the timber seawall that protected the campground and day-use area.
Three years later, the campground, which once featured 64 oceanfront sites for recreational vehicles and served about 70,000 visitors annually, remains closed. Much of the area’s fill material, parking lot pavement and underground utilities were lost to the waves.
The day-use area, with picnic tables and shade ramadas, is open, but the pedestrian promenade has been relocated and temporary barricades ring holes in the seawall.
California State Parks and Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks launched the Seacliff Resilience and Recovery project after the 2023 storms. They examined projected sea level rise and storm activity to understand the beach’s vulnerability to coastal hazards and plan for its future.
The team commissioned a 2024 study, conducted by infrastructure consulting firm Moffatt & Nichol, that found that more than 80% of the beach’s assets — roads, parking lots and buildings — were exposed to future coastal hazards, such as large surf, flooding during storms and beach and cliff erosion.
Projections show the amount of beach steadily shrinking over time. One foot of sea level rise would put the Seacliff campground at “high” vulnerability. A rise of 2 feet would put the campground at “severe” risk and the day use area at “high” risk, the study found.
“The sand is gone and so is all the campground space,” one beachgoer wrote in a recent comment on a Seacliff State Beach Facebook post. “I wouldn’t want the state to rebuild because it will be wiped out again. The beach is half the size it used to be, even in the summer.”
Last year, the team produced a series of shoreline adaptation alternatives aimed at slowing beach erosion, restoring natural habitats and preserving public access.
The recommended plans call for removing what remains of the RV campground, installing a vegetated dune and consolidating and elevating the lower parking lot.
The seawall protecting the campground “had been destroyed many times in the past, and it was completely destroyed in 2023,” said Will Fourt, a planner for State Parks’ Santa Cruz district. “With the vulnerability of that location, we do not plan to rebuild the RV campground in that location.”
In the day-use area, the plans call for reducing parking to expand sandy beach habitat, consolidating restrooms into a single elevated facility and installing native plants and vegetated dunes. Under the recommendations, timber seawalls in both areas would be replaced with a concrete edge and seatblocks.
The park amenities and coastal protection measures at Seacliff will be finalized in a coastal facilities management plan, the next step of the recovery process. Then comes an environmental review, cost estimates, design, permitting and construction, Fourt said.
He said the existing funding allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the project is not “nearly enough” for the recommended plans.
The first construction could come in 2028 with the development of a structured vegetated dune in the day-use area. All the other plans will “optimistically” begin in 2030, according to the Seacliff website, which Fourt confirmed.
“There’s been damage at the park, and there could be more damage before we’re able to rebuild permanent facilities and go through this full process,” Fourt said.
But other fixes are underway. Asphalt patching and wooden handrail repairs along the day-use area’s seawall continued through December 2025, per the project’s website, while repairs and sand removal for the day-use walking path will occur in this spring, after winter storm activity subsides. Ongoing work includes adding slurry to large sinkholes, pumping sand out of restroom pipes and emergent seawall repairs, according to the site.
Fourt said California State Parks is launching a camping feasibility study, around the same time as the ongoing coastal management plan, to look for nearby places that could replace the campground.
Staff will consider neighboring New Brighton State Beach in Capitola, Sunset State Beach in Watsonville and the upper part of Seacliff as part of the study, which he said will involve two public meetings for input, one in fall 2026 and one in 2027.
Beachgoers at Seacliff on Wednesday recalled fond memories of the campgrounds.
“This was such a wonderful place, having the campgrounds down here and people coming and visiting,” Watsonville resident Guy Richards told Lookout. “In the mornings, when you come down and people are cooking their breakfast and things like that, it was nice.”
Some said the pace of recovery was unsurprising, given the number of steps and reviews.
“You have all these entities that do nothing but make the process and procedure longer and harder,” Santa Cruz resident Fred Pfister said. “Why?”
Cynthia Richards, from Watsonville, said the closed campground has a positive side for locals, such as more beach and fewer cars.
“I do enjoy that this is a peaceful place now to walk and you don’t have vehicles right on the beach,” she said.
Lookout photojournalist Kevin Painchaud contributed to this report.
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