The Palisades fire is named for the Palisades Highlands, where the blaze erupted on the morning of January 7, 2025. The conflagration rapidly spread throughout Pacific Palisades and then into Malibu and unincorporated Los Angeles County, including Sunset Mesa, the area above Monte Nido, and parts of Topanga. All of these areas sustained major damage—it is estimated that nearly a third of Malibu was destroyed in the fire—but Pacific Palisades was unquestionably ground zero for this massive disaster.
The fire encompassed 23,000 acres. The damage is so extensive it’s hard to visualize its enormity: 11 deaths, 6,500 structures destroyed, 1,017 more damaged. Although the destruction is widespread, it is felt most painfully on a personal scale. The Palisades fire attacked neighborhoods, the smaller communities that make up the fabric of our cities, townships, and districts. It tore whole holes in that fabric that will permanently alter the pattern of all the lives that have been impacted, but especially the lives of those who have suddenly found themselves not just without their homes but without their neighborhoods.
The name “Palisades” now evokes disaster and desolation, instead of conjuring images of peaceful, residential neighborhoods. Pacific Palisades began as a Christian utopia, it became a haven for Jewish intellectuals fleeing certain death in Nazi Germany, and a laboratory for mid-century architectural innovations. Before the fire, the Palisades was a place where children trick-or-treat and entire blocks got into the spirit of the winter holidays with displays of Christmas and Hanukkah lights. This was a quiet, prosperous place that still had a small town feel, and that’s how its residents liked it.
The community of Pacific Palisades is—or was until last month—home to around 25,000. It’s part of the city of Los Angeles, a neighborhood made up of smaller neighborhoods and satellite areas.
People have lived in the Pacific Palisades area for millennia. This is the ancestral home of the Tongva, who lived here long before the arrival of the Spanish. It was part of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, awarded by governor Juan Alvarado to Ysidro Reyes and Francisco Marquez in 1839, a decade before California became part of the US.
In the early years of the motion picture industry, 18,000 acres in Santa Ynez Canyon became one of the first movie ranches, with elaborate sets, hundreds of horses, and a population of around 700, depending on what was being filmed. Inceville, named for pioneering filmmaker Thomas Ince, was no longer in use when a Methodist association purchased land in the area in 1922. The remaining film sets and buildings burned in a wildfire in 1923.
Other parts of Pacific Palisades have also been threatened by or destroyed by wildfire in the past. The Palisades fire was the first time that the community has faced almost complete devastation.
The future seemed bright for Methodist minister Charles Scott and his vision for a “Christian utopia” when he delivered his 1922 Sunrise Easter Sunday sermon to an audience of thousands in the center of the newly named Pacific Palisades. Scott, the president of the association that founded Pacific Palisades, planned churches, lecture halls, and a Christian education center, “the Chautauqua Institute of the Pacific.” The name lives on in the street at the western edge of Santa Monica Canyon
Some of those original buildings in Temescal Gateway Park made it through the Palisades fire, only to be damaged by flooding and debris flow this month. Community United Methodist Church, one of the first structures in the newly founded community, burned on January 8, the second day of the Palisades fire. One hundred years of history were erased in just a few hours.
Saint Mathew’s Episcopal Church, another local landmark, also burned. That’s the second time the Episcopal parish was impacted directly by wildfire. The church building destroyed in the Palisades fire replaced one that was lost in the 1978 Mandeville fire, which burned 30 homes, damaged 18 others, and burned 6,130 acres.
Corpus Christi Catholic Church was also destroyed, but 14 stained glass windows representing the Stations of the Cross came through the fire unscathed. In an interview with local media, LAFD Captain Frank Lima described their survival as a miracle. All the more so since the church is surrounded by block after block of houses that were completely consumed by the fire. Almost all of the houses and many of the businesses in the center of the Palisades were completely destroyed.
North Village was built by members of the Methodist movement in the 1920s. The houses are—or were—small and full of character. This neighborhood is known as the “Alphabet Streets,” because each one is named sequentially for a letter of the alphabet, from A-K, beginning with Albright, Bashford, and Carey. Many of those streets are impossibly narrow. Although Pacific Palisades is increasingly upscale, and property values have skyrocketed in recent years, there are many longtime homeowners who are not wealthy, and some fear that they will not be able to rebuild.
The business center along Sunset Boulevard, known as the Village, was also originally built in the 1920s. There are no high rises in Pacific Palisades, and when developer Rick Caruso built a 125,000-square-foot shopping mall in the heart of the community, it was conditioned to blend in with the residential character of the surrounding neighborhood.
The Depression brought an end to the first building boom, but Pacific Palisades continued to attract new residents, including some high profile ones who sought privacy and space. They included comedian, writer, and performer Will Rogers, and pioneering filmmaker Mary Pickford, who became early advocates for preserving what is now Topanga State Park. Many early filmakers and performers were familiar with the area from its Inceville days.
Will Rogers was an expert Western rider, but he also enjoyed polo and built a polo field at his home that attracted many of the sports enthusiasts, including actor Leslie Howard and a young Walt Disney. Roger’s widow gave the house and grounds to the state for a park after her husband’s death.
The site is still home to the only grass polo field in Los Angeles. Before the fire, games were still played there most weekends. But Rogers’ house, the ten-bedroom rustic mansion, with all of its eclectic cowboy decor and all of its household treasures, was destroyed in the fire.
postcards like this one for the early 1930s. The house, now a museum, was destroyed in the
fire. Image from the author’s collection
The Hollywood crowd weren’t the only luminaries drawn to the Palisades. At the beginning of WWII, a new wave of inspiration and creativity was brought to the Palisades by Jewish and anti Nazi German and Austrian emigrés. They included German Jewish author Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta, and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann. Mann described Villa Aurora—the home of the Feuchtwangers—as “a true castle by the sea.” It quickly became a touchstone for this community of exiles, and has remained a center of culture and enlightenment as the home of the International Feuchtwanger Society.
Villa Aurora did not burn in the Palisades fire, but the hillside below the house did. The hillside’s stability and the impact of smoke damage inside the building remain concerns. Mann’s Palisades house, also an important cultural center, survived the fire, unharmed.
The Palisades has continued to be home to a large and vibrant Jewish community. Kehillat Israel, the Palisades Synagogue, was in an area that was decimated by the fire, but it did not burn. It became a shelter and a refuge for community members in the hectic days following the fire, and remains a symbol of endurance and hope.
Development exploded in the post WWII boom years. As the Palisades community expanded, homes were built around the border of the Village, south into Rustic Canyon, along the bluffs, across the Marquez Knolls north of Sunset, and the El Medio Mesa, south of Sunset and west of Temescal Canyon. Some of these neighborhoods were filled with modest homes, others were palatial. Even before the fire, this was an area in transition, as older homes were increasingly being bought up by real estate investors.
Pacific Palisades has a mix of housing tracts and custom houses that range from modest two-bedroom houses, to lavish estates, and include some mid-century architectural gems. Several of the famous Case Study Houses in Pacific Palisades survived the fire. These prototype dwellings were designed and built from 1945 through the 1960s to showcase new materials and ideas. They include the Eames House, Case Study House No. 8, designed and lived in by Ray and Charles Eames, and now owned and maintained by the non-profit Eames Foundation; the Entenza House (CSH 9, also designed by Eames with architect Eero Saarinen, but privately owned); and, the West House (CSH 18, designed by Rodney Walker, also privately owned). All three, located in the same neighborhood near Chautauqua, survived the fire. Other celebrated architectural treasures did not. The Kesler House, designed by Richard Neutra in 1950, and the Rowen House, designed in 1957 by Josef Van der Kar, were among the architectural heritage lost in the fire.
The Palisades fire completely destroyed some neighborhoods, and skipped over others. The damage in Rustic Canyon was relatively light. The Tahitian Terrace Mobile Home Park, and its smaller neighbor, the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park, were completely destroyed in the fire.
The Bowl, built in 1939, was one of the first trailer parks in the country. Eagle-eyed film enthusiasts can catch a glimpse of the park in the 1955 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called “Revenge”, looking very much the same as it did prior to the fire. 172 mobile homes were destroyed here during the fire. Tahitian Terrace was built in 1963. It had 250 homes, a pool and a clubhouse. The two mobile home parks were just about the last affordable beachside housing in Los Angeles County, thanks to rent controls. Residents fear the property owners may seek to change the zoning instead of allowing them to rebuild.
Castellammare, the colorful collection of houses clinging to the hillsides west of Sunset on Pacific Coast Highway, was built at the same time that Scott and his Methodist Association were building the first homes in Pacific Palisades, but the theme here wasn’t universal brotherhood, it was luxury. The development, subdivided in 1925 by the Frank Meline Company, was inspired by the Amalfi Coast of Italy. All the streets were given Italian names, and the original houses were built in a fantasy Mediterranean style. Before the fire, this neighborhood had 365 homes, ranging from originals built for silent film stars and other luminaries of the 1920s, to modern homes.
The historic building on PCH that was Thelma Todd’s Roadhouse in the 1930s and the mansion with the garage where the silent film era actress was found dead in 1935 survived the fire, but many of the neighboring houses did not. Almost all the houses on Porto Marina Way—the street that faced the highway—were destroyed or damaged. Almost all of the ones on Bellino were spared.
At the western edge of Castellammare stands the Villa de Leon, a Renaissance revival mansion built by Leon Kauffman in 1927. Kaufman made a fortune selling wool for uniforms to the US military during WWI. This landmark mansion is so grand it is often mistaken for its neighbor, the Getty Villa. The slope below the villa was scorched and may have sustained damage to the retaining wall that prevents the house from sliding onto the highway, but the villa survived the fire, when many of its neighbors did not. Below it, the Getty Villa, with its world-renowned treasure of ancient art, and extensive Roman-style gardens had a close call, but was mostly undamaged.
The Getty, which opened to the public in 1974, stands at the entrance to Sunset Mesa. Built between 1962-63, Sunset Mesa is described as the first major expansion of the Palisades, but this community, sandwiched between the City of Malibu and the Palisades, is part of unincorporated Los Angeles County. Like its neighbor, Topanga.
Sunset Mesa—formerly Parker Mesa—is home to LAN-215, an archeological site dating to 1200 BCE. The Sunset Mesa subdevelopment was part of a larger plan to create a series of housing tracts throughout what is now Topanga State Park, including a city of 60,000 and a freeway to connect these islands of urbanization. The plan faced opposition from a coalition of environmental groups, including the Topanga Association for a Scenic Community. Activists raised concerns about environmental impacts—including fire risk—but the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors was not swayed. April Builders received the contract to develop the mesa in 1962. The first 360 homes were built in 12 architectural styles that include “Regency, English cottage, Oriental, Early California and contemporary.” They cost between $43,000-$58,000.
The development grew in phases, incorporating around 500 residences in a mix of single family homes and apartments. Plans for neighboring tracts and what was essentially a full-sized city further up the canyon were defeated. Sunset Mesa remains a solitary island of residential streets. It’s a quiet neighborhood, one that is purely residential with no shops of business.
Unlike Pacific Palisades, there are no architectural treasures here or historic buildings, but this was a neighborhood with many families and older residents. Ocean views were a priority for the builders. Utility lines were undergrounded, and the landscaping was deliberately selected to be low growing and carefully trimmed, something that should have helped reduce fire risk as well as protect views, but it is estimated that eighty percent of the homes in Sunset Mesa were destroyed or damaged in the Palisades fire.
The Palisades Highlands is a lot like Sunset Mesa, only much larger. This community also has only one way in or out. Although this is where the Palisades fire ignited and how this fire got its name, the neighborhood escaped with relatively little damage. Several streets of homes were damaged and destroyed, but much of the community emerged unscathed.
Like Sunset Mesa, this was a master-planned tract. Leitch, Kiyotoki & Associates of Newport Beach was the firm selected to plan the highlands in 1968. It was supposed to have a 22-acre lake, 2,850 single-family homes and apartments, a boat club, shopping center, and a lake-view restaurant, not unlike Westlake Village in Ventura County. The developers ultimately opted for an extra 200 houses in lieu of the lake. Palisades Highlands does have a 9.2-acre reservoir that can hold 118 million gallons when full, but it has been empty since February of 2024, raising questions and the possibility of lawsuits.
When the Palisades Highlands were built, critics once again charged that this island of houses in a sea of open space was a fire risk. Fortunately, residents fleeing the Palisades fire on January 7, 2025, were not overcome by flames on the way out, although some were ordered to leave their cars and forced to flee on foot. Like Sunset Mesa, this is a quiet residential neighborhood, home to many area families. Because it is one of the newer developments in the area, it still has a number of original residents. One of its major draws is its proximity to Topanga State Park, with miles of hiking trails and mountain views, but being in the urban-wildland interface comes at the cost of extreme fire risk. That’s something Palisades Highlands residents live with, but it’s not something that residents of the older and more heavily developed parts of the Palisades have had to deal with for decades, not since the 1938 Topanga fire, which did not do as extensive damage because there was far less to burn.
Those Palisades residents fortunate enough not to have lost their homes still face tremendous challenges. On some streets only one or two houses stand in a sea of rubble. In other areas an entire street or block may have remained mostly unscathed, but the neighboring homes are gone, and much of the infrastructure that made this a livable community has burned. Many of the schools were damaged or destroyed. The grocery stores, the bank building, offices that housed doctors and dentists, even the traffic lights and stop signs, are all gone. No one knows how much toxic residue will remain once the rubble is cleared.
No one knows how long it will take for neighbors to move back into neighborhoods again, or what those new neighborhoods will look like. Many lots are for sale or have already been sold, their former owners wishing only to move on. “This lot offers a fresh start for buyers with vision,” one listing states. “Unparalleled opportunity to create your private oasis in one of Los Angeles’ most desirable neighborhoods,” says another.
The fire didn’t stop going when it reached the edge of Pacific Palisades, but Palisades was ground zero, and sustained catastrophic damage. Recovery will be slow, no matter what the politicians promise, but beneath all of the ash, and debris, and heartbreak, are neighborhoods with history, and residents with the determination to write the next chapter of that history, to see this place founded in a spirit of unity and optimism rise from the flames.
[…] By Suzanne Guldimann, Topanga New Times […]