Am I obsessed with Malibu? Not in the way most people are, I think. I think I mostly am taking advantage of being so close to such gorgeous beaches and scenery. Like, if I lived close to Griffith Park, I’d be there all the time, but I’m not — I’m a 15 minute drive from Zuma Beach. What of it?

Anyway, I don’t know what I was thinking about yesterday, but whatever that was turned into an online foray into the California Coastal Records Project. What a fascinating site! Sort of like the USC Digital Archive and the UCLA Digital Collection. You can literally search a location in California and look at how its changed between 1972 and now or move up and down the coast in pictures.

Anyway, check out this photo. This is Paradise Cove in 1972. Malibu looks so gorgeous and…empty. Click to enlarge. Fast forward to 1979…

And the trees have now been interrupted by rows of housing tracts. Sure, the angle on the photo is a little different, but still. You can see Paradise Cove looks a lot less wild.

The angle on this shot is a lot tighter, so you can’t see how Paradise Cove has changed from 1979 to 2006. But its easier to see in the 2004 photo.

Yeah. That’s a lot of houses in Malibu now.