California Coastal Records: Aerial photographic survey of California Coastline

EDIT: Found 'em - http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/image.cgi?image=2...

The blue house with the white roof of the far left closest to the cliff looks like the most precarious... that's scary!

Your photo is a stone's throw from the well-known "Sunken City" in San Pedro (a neighborhood of LA). If you go two photographs northward, you can see a nice view of the remains of a sudden subsidence event in 1929.

There are still remains of roads, sidewalks, and other infrastructure. It's now a pretty well-known hiking spot, although you're formally not supposed to go there:

http://www.welikela.com/sunken-city-san-pedro-hidden-l-a-adv...

The land was moving as much as 11 inches per day, but most houses were able to be moved before they were destroyed.

So many of the houses along the Pacific coast were built before the geologic truth was known/admitted.

That's mountain/cliff/etc housing everywhere. Some people like literally living on the edge. Daly City's got a similar area where the cliffsides are actively crumbling during earthquakes and el ninos http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/maplocate.cgi?1,2...

If you click on "Time Comparison" you can see images from older datasets.

One interesting thing is that the California Coastal Project isn't funded by the state (as far as I know.) Just one guy, his wife, and his passion project. I like the fact that Washington State seems to be funding its own project.

Are you talking about the wall in the center/right portion? I'd assume it was built a long time ago as a safety measure to keep people from getting stranding in the beach/cave and they haven't taken it down. Just a guess though.