These vintage skateboarding photos were shot between 1975 and 1978 by Hugh Holland. He started out shooting skaters in the drainage ditches of Laurel Canyon and kept going as they moved into empty backyard pools. The pictures are a close look at Southern California’s first skateboarding boom, and Holland’s own words explain why they glow.
Updated October 25, 2026.
The mid-1970s were a rough stretch in California. There was a severe drought, the economy was shaky, and gas shortages meant hours in line at the pump just to fill your tank. Summers in Los Angeles were hot, and there wasn’t much for a kid to do. Some suburban houses sat empty, and plenty of backyard pools sat dry. Out of that mix came skate culture. The Dogtown crowd, the Z-Boys and countless other kids turned the suburbs, the bone-dry drainage ditches and the beach towns into a playground for a brand new kind of sport.
Most of us remember a hot summer day as a kid with nothing to do, and how fast that turns into making your own fun. If you’ve followed skateboarding for a long time, you learn to read these pictures by what is behind the skater. A pool wall, the edge of a ditch, a chain-link fence: the setting tells you more than the trick does, because in the 1970s skaters borrowed everything. Nothing had been built for the sport yet. Our vintage photos of New York City in the 1970s show the same decade from the other coast.
Vintage skateboarding photos start in a drainage ditch
Holland was a Hollywood photographer. In 1975 he was driving down Laurel Canyon Boulevard when he noticed heads moving behind the roadside bushes. They belonged to skaters riding a dry drainage basin. California was in a drought, so lots of basins sat empty. He pulled over and started shooting, and he kept at it for about three years.
Holland was not a skateboarder himself. The series became a book, Hugh Holland: Locals Only : California Skateboarding 1975-1978, published by AMMO Books. What you see here is just a small taste of it.
You can find more from Hugh at: hughholland.com | Facebook
Empty swimming pools and the Z-Boys
The ditches came first, and the pools came next. During the drought of 1976-77, homeowners across Southern California drained their backyard pools to save water, and skaters climbed in. Skaters like Steve Alba, Steve Olson and Jay Adams went hunting for empty pools. They hopped fences, cleaned out the pool floors and skated until the police showed up. Most of us remember doing something at that age that we knew we shouldn’t, and listening for someone to come and catch us.
The Zephyr team, known as the Z-Boys, formed in 1975 around a Santa Monica surf shop that opened in 1973. Its members included Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams. The sloped pool walls helped push the team toward tricks in the air.
Holland told Vice that the skaters welcomed him right away “because I was the only one around with a camera.” He says they also had new wheels from Europe that gave them more grip on steep walls, so everyone had something new to show off. Once they found the pools, he says, “I had a car, which most of them didn’t, I was in.” Most of us know the friend with the car or the camera who never gets left out of the plans.
Why these vintage skateboarding photos glow orange
The sunset look was partly a scheduling problem. Holland told Vice in 2015 that he could not shoot earlier in the day, so most frames come from late afternoon. He also credits the air: there was more smog in Los Angeles then, which he says gave the pictures their “yellowish, orangey cast.” Anyone who has flipped through old family snapshots knows that warm, faded color that makes a photo feel like another decade. Holland sums up the era in a few words: “It was a great time.”
The first contests and skateparks
Organized contests took shape in 1975. The Z-Boys entered their first competition that year, the Del Mar Nationals, where Jay Adams placed third and Tony Alva fourth in freestyle. Russ Howell, a freestyle legend, won the senior men’s freestyle event at the same Bahne/Cadillac National Skateboard Championships in Del Mar. It was said to be the biggest skateboarding contest since the 1960s, with about 500 skaters over two days. Compared with the tricks you see today, the moves back then were simple.
Carlsbad Skatepark opened on March 3, 1976, as California’s first skatepark. Skateboard City in Port Orange, Florida, opened around the same time. By the end of the decade interest had faded and the original parks began to close, and a 1980s downturn plus high insurance costs hurt the first wave.
The sport came back in a big way. Skateboarding made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games, with events from July 25 to August 5, 2021 at Ariake Urban Sports Park. Four medals were on offer: men’s and women’s park, and men’s and women’s street. That’s a long way from a bunch of kids killing time on a hot summer day.
Vintage skateboarding photos: common questions
Who took these vintage skateboarding photos?
Hugh Holland took them between 1975 and 1978. He was a Hollywood photographer who stopped to photograph skaters in a Laurel Canyon drainage ditch in 1975 and kept shooting for about three years. He was not a skater himself. His series is published as the book Locals Only by AMMO Books.
When was the first skatepark built in California?
Carlsbad Skatepark opened on March 3, 1976, and was California’s first skatepark. The original parks of that era began to close toward the end of the decade as interest dropped, and rising liability insurance costs in the 1980s made it harder for them to stay open.
Why did skaters use empty swimming pools?
During the drought of 1976-77, homeowners drained backyard pools to save water. The sloped walls let skaters carve and fly off the lip, and the Z-Boys used them to develop aerial skateboarding. Before the pools, skaters rode dry drainage ditches in the hills, which are the setting for Holland’s first frames.
Who were the Z-Boys?
The Z-Boys were the skate team of the Zephyr surf shop in Santa Monica and Venice, California. The shop opened in 1973 and the official skateboard team formed in 1975. It had twelve members in all, among them Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams, and it ceased to exist by the end of 1976.