9 California Beach Towns Locals Love That Tourists Never Find

Most visitors to California aim their rental cars at the same three ZIP codes.

Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Santa Monica Pier draw the crowds and the parking tickets.

Californians, on the other hand, pack a cooler and drive the other way.

These are the California beach towns locals love that tourists drive right past.

Cayucos

Cayucos calls itself the last of the California beach towns, and Californians take the claim seriously.

The main drag runs a few blocks of surf shops, antique stores, and a dog asleep on the sidewalk.

There aren’t stoplights.

Cayucos State Beach wraps around a wooden pier where locals fish for perch and watch beginners wipe out on gentle waves.

Grab a bag of sea-salt shortbread from Brown Butter Cookie Company, then eat it on the sand while the fog burns off.

Morro Bay gets the tour buses rolling down Highway 1.

Cayucos gets the regulars.

Trinidad

Trinidad sits way up in Humboldt County, and it ranks among California’s smallest incorporated cities.

Fewer than 300 people call it home.

Crab boats bob in the harbor below Trinidad Head, a mossy rock you can hike in an afternoon.

Bring a jacket.

Trinidad State Beach and College Cove hide at the bottom of steep trails, ringed by offshore rock towers and tide pools full of anemones.

Redwoods start just inland, so you can walk under 300-foot trees and stand on the sand the same morning.

The crowds chasing selfies stay far to the south.

Moss Landing

Moss Landing barely counts as a town, and Californians love it for exactly that.

Around 200 people live between the harbor and the highway.

Sea otters raft together in Elkhorn Slough by the dozens, paws tucked, snoozing on the incoming tide.

The slough holds the second-largest tract of tidal salt marsh in California, and birders count more than 135 species along its channels.

Kayakers paddle out from the harbor while fishing boats haul in Dungeness crab.

Otters are everywhere.

Skip the aquarium lines in Monterey, and order a bowl of cioppino at Phil’s Fish Market instead.

Montara

Montara hugs Highway 1 just south of Pacifica, and San Francisco locals treat it as their private beach.

City crowds pile into Half Moon Bay a few miles down the coast.

Montara State Beach stays mellow, a mile of sand below a bluff with room to spread out.

The old coast road here scared drivers so badly that Caltrans finally bored a tunnel through the mountain, open since 2013.

Tide pools at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve sit a short walk north, full of starfish and hermit crabs when the water drops.

Check the chart.

A cast-iron lighthouse above the cove runs as a hostel now, so you can sleep to the foghorn for the price of a bunk.

Avila Beach

Avila Beach tucks into a south-facing cove, and Californians drive here when they want warm water without the mob.

The bay blocks the wind that hammers the rest of the Central Coast.

So, the water stays warmer, and families wade in past July without turning blue.

Harford Pier still works as a fishing dock, with a market selling whatever came off the boats that morning.

Mineral hot springs bubble up in the hills above town, and the Bob Jones Trail rolls down to the sand on two wheels.

The ATV crowd heads to Pismo Beach next door, so Avila stays calm.

Point Reyes Station

Point Reyes Station anchors the coast an hour north of San Francisco, and locals treat it as the gateway to the wildest beaches in the Bay Area.

The town runs one main street of old feed barns turned bakeries and cheese shops.

Grab a morning bun at Bovine Bakery before the line spills onto the sidewalk.

Point Reyes blue cheese and Tomales Bay oysters come from just up the road.

The San Andreas fault runs right through the valley, and a fence on the Earthquake Trail still sits 16 feet out of line from the 1906 quake.

Limantour and Drakes Beach stretch empty most weekdays, backed by cliffs and grazing tule elk.

Summerland

Summerland sits between Montecito and Carpinteria, and it stays overlooked while its famous neighbors pull the crowds.

Antique shops line the short main street on the hill.

Below them, Lookout Park drops to a wide beach where dogs run off-leash and pelicans dive just offshore.

The country's first offshore oil wells went up on piers right here in 1896.

They're long gone now.

Loon Point beach hides at the end of a dirt path most travelers zoom past on Highway 101.

The postcards all feature Santa Barbara, but locals bring their dogs to Summerland.

Cambria

Cambria draws its share of visitors on the way to Hearst Castle, but Californians come for the town itself, not the mansion.

Moonstone Beach runs along a boardwalk where you can hunt for the milky agates that give the beach its name.

Sea otters and harbor seals bob just past the surf.

Bring layers.

The Fiscalini Ranch Preserve trail hugs the bluff, with whale-watching benches built right into the path.

Monterey pines grow wild here in a native forest found in only a few spots on earth.

Cap the day with a slice of olallieberry pie at Linn's, a berry you'll barely find outside California's Central Coast.

Aptos

Aptos stretches along the coast between Santa Cruz and Monterey, and locals slip here when the boardwalk crowds get to be too much.

Seacliff State Beach and Rio Del Mar offer wide, flat sand without the carnival noise.

A concrete ship sits half-sunk offshore, a strange relic from the 1920s you can spot from the shore.

There are redwoods too.

Inland, the Forest of Nisene Marks hides miles of trails, and one leads straight to the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.