Fraser's Million Dollar Pier was a 20th-century amusement park in Ocean Park, California in the United States. The pier was located between Pier Avenue and Marine Street, in a community situated between Santa Monica and Venice in Los Angeles County. Developed by A. H. Fraser, a booster in Ocean Park who had formerly been business partners with Abbot Kinney of Venice, the pier opened to the public on June 17, 1911, and was destroyed September 3, 1912, in a catastrophic fire that spread into the adjacent neighborhood and destroyed six to eight square blocks.
The pier was also known as the Fraser Pier and the Ocean Park Pier; both names were also applied to a second pier built on the same site that stood from 1913 to 1924.
History
Fraser's Million Dollar Pier was one of several "amusement piers" (such as the Abbot Kinney Pier, Sunset Pier, Venice Amusement Pier) that were built in the first half of the 20th century on the Santa Monica Bay, most of which drew huge crowds in their day, and several of which eventually burned in huge fires. The Ocean Park pier was developed by Alexander H. Fraser, who had once been partners with Kinney, the developer of neighboring Venice, California. Fraser was born in New Brunswick and had come, by way of Michigan, to California in 1885.
Fraser's Million Dollar Pier was one of three piers in Ocean Park in 1911, along with the Municipal Pier at Colorado Avenue and Bristol Pier at Hollister Avenue. The Million Dollar Pier was built on a wharf that had first been constructed by Abbot Kinney in 1898 and abandoned in 1904. The pier may have been a replacement for an adjacent, less-lavish Horseshoe Pier, and was reportedly based on a model in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Young's Million Dollar Pier. Fraser would later place advertisements featuring a point-by-point comparison of the two million dollar piers. The new pier was constructed between Pier Avenue and Marine Street, where South Beach Park and the Sea Colony condominiums stand at present. Construction began September 1, 1910. According to a newspaper announcement of October 1910, Fraser's Million Dollar Pier had been capitalized with $300,000 in stock. By December work was well underway on plans made by architects Eager & Eager. The pier's 800 concrete pilings were in diameter; the rest was built out of lumber. The pier measured by , with an "extension" measuring by . Fraser's Million Dollar Pier was lit up at night by a purported 250,000 incandescent light bulbs.
Opening day was June 17, 1911, and opening-weekend offerings included "musical and vaudeville entertainment, freak shows, a baby incubator show, refreshment stands, booths of all descriptions, and a diving tank." Adjacent structures not owned by Fraser included the Dragon's Gorge roller coaster, and Charles I. Looff's Hippodrome, which housed one of the Danish artisan's famed carousels.