On September 13, judges running the 21st Annual Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon at Del Mar's Dog Beach called the final round early. Rough water had been building through the weekend, and the Best-In-Surf final, the round that crowns one overall champion from the weight-class winners, got scrapped for safety before it could start. More than 60 dogs had already ridden the earlier heats. About 1,500 people showed up to watch. Helen Woodward Animal Center, the nonprofit that runs the fundraiser and was founded a few miles inland in Rancho Santa Fe in 1972, still walked away with more than $20,000 for its adoption programs.
None of that surprised anyone who actually spends weekends at this beach. Conditions here change fast, and everyone who shows up regularly knows it. What might surprise them: if you'd asked a longtime regular for directions to the entrance a year and a half ago, they would have told you to look for the garden. Ask that same person today and the garden isn't there. A fair amount of the internet hasn't caught up.
Ask for the Garden and You'll Get a Blank Look
For nine years, the unofficial entrance to North Beach was marked by a small planted memorial known as Gwen's Garden, started by Del Mar resident Jimmy Joe Gooding after his yellow Labrador died. What began as him picking up trash and filling in a bare patch with succulents grew into a spot where visitors left painted rocks and small tributes for their own pets, eventually covering close to 2,000 animals. The city formalized it in 2017 under its Adopt-a-Spot beautification program, with the Parks and Recreation Committee voting unanimously to approve the plantings on the condition that native species be used.
That approval didn't hold. In early 2025, the city issued a formal notice that the garden had to come down. Del Mar's official explanation, still posted on the city's own newsflash page, points to the California Coastal Commission's authority over the state-owned land the garden sat on, plus unpermitted pathways and stairs that hadn't been built to code. A Coastal Commission spokesperson told a local TV reporter at the time that the agency had not itself sent Gooding any notices, and the city stated that it was working with him to carry out the removal safely. The memorial rocks were relocated and became part of a temporary pet memorial exhibit at the San Diego County Fair. The plot at the entrance is bare now, an Adopt-a-Spot patch with no plaque and no rocks.
If you're new to walking this beach and someone tells you to meet "by the garden," they mean where it used to be.
One Beach, Cut in Two
Even without the garden as a marker, Dog Beach is easy to misjudge because it isn't really one beach. The San Dieguito River outlet splits it into two halves that behave differently depending on which side you park on. North of the inlet, parking runs on meters along Camino Del Mar, and that's also the only side with a lifeguard tower and the only public restrooms, three portable toilets tucked near the community garden area. South of the inlet, parking is mostly free with just a small metered section, but there's no lifeguard station and no restroom of any kind.
That asymmetry matters for anyone planning more than a quick walk. A morning with young kids or an older dog probably goes better on the north side, close to the lifeguard and the restrooms. A longer stretch with a fit dog who doesn't need supervision might make more sense on the free-parking south side, as long as everyone's comfortable without facilities. The volleyball posts that show up in most reviews of this beach, wooden, no nets provided, cluster on the north side too.
The Rules Flip in Mid-June
Del Mar's coastline breaks into three managed sections, and only one of them is actually a dog beach. North Beach, the section described above, allows dogs off-leash between dawn and 8 a.m. during the summer season that runs June 16 through Labor Day, with looser voice-control rules the rest of the year. Walk one section south, into the stretch between Powerhouse Park and 29th Street, and dogs aren't allowed on the sand at all from June 16 through Labor Day. Keep going south past that and you're in the zone where leashes are required no matter the season.
The practical effect is that a dog owner who's used to letting their dog off the leash in April can get caught out completely by mid-June, not because the rule changed, but because they wandered a few blocks south into a different zone with a different rule. Regulars learn the boundaries by the parks that mark them, Powerhouse Park on one end and 29th Street on the other, rather than by any posted sign most people notice while their dog is already off the leash and running.
The Ground Itself Keeps Moving
None of this sits on especially stable footing, in the literal sense. On March 11, 2026, a chunk of coastal bluff roughly 75 by 75 feet gave way near 10th Street and Camino Del Mar, just south of Dog Beach, dumping rock and sandstone onto a stretch of sand that's usually crowded with off-leash dogs. Lifeguards and sheriff's deputies roped off the area within the hour. No injuries were reported, but it wasn't an isolated event. A 25-foot collapse hit the same general stretch, between 9th and 10th streets, back in 2024. Bluff failures here tend to follow storms and wet winters, and they've occasionally forced temporary halts to COASTER rail service while inspectors check the tracks above.
It's worth connecting this to the garden story rather than treating them as separate items. Part of the city's stated justification for removing Gwen's Garden was that its unpermitted stairs and paver pathways created safety issues on unstable ground. Whatever you think of how that decision was communicated, the underlying condition, an eroding bluff edge that shifts unpredictably after rain, is real and well documented independent of the garden dispute. This is a beach where both the informal landmarks and the actual coastline are subject to change without much warning.
What Greets Visitors This Fall
Walk up to Dog Beach today and the entrance north of the river mouth is quieter than it used to be, no rock garden, no plaque, just the Adopt-a-Spot plot doing what Adopt-a-Spot plots usually do. The lifeguard tower is still there. The portable restrooms are still there. The volleyball posts are still there. And once a year, usually mid-September, Helen Woodward Animal Center still turns this stretch of sand into the loudest, most crowded day on the Del Mar calendar, storm swell or not.
Regulars will tell you the beach hasn't really changed. They're both right and not quite. The dogs still run the same sand. The landmark they used to give directions by is gone, and the ground under all of it is a little less certain than it was five years ago. Knowing which is which is most of what it means to actually know this beach, rather than just visit it.
If you're weighing what it's like to live somewhere that changes in these small, specific ways, on this coastline, at this pace, that's the kind of on-the-ground read Sonja Huter brings to every conversation about Del Mar.