BMX/Skate Spots: The History of "The Ashtray" Skatepark

The tiny Murdy Park Skatepark in Huntington Beach, nicknamed "The Ashtray" by locals, was the first of the new wave of public skateparks in California in the 1990s...

It was so small, many of us Huntington Beach locals in the 1990’s called it “The Ashtray.” But this tiny concrete skatepark was needed for a proof of concept. This was the first public concrete skatepark built in the 1990’s. Would a public skatepark work? Would every kid who skinned his knee try to sue the city? Would there be fights and drug deals and gangbangers and homeless winos hanging out there? Or would kids actually use it for skateboarding? This little park proved that a public skatepark, without any supervision, could work in California. This tiny skatepark made future public parks possible. That led to the 200+ public skateparks that now exist in California, and that’s a good thing. Murdy Park skatepark is located at 7000 Norma Avenue in Huntington Beach, California. #steveemigphotos

This may surprise you kids, but not everything is on the internet. The internet, the real public version, happened around 1994. Yes, ARPAnet, early chatrooms, blah, blah, blah… I’m not going to argue world wide web history. My point here is that there’s a lot of stuff that happened in history before the internet happened, and there’s a bunch of that stuff that still isn’t recorded on the web. There’s also a bunch of stuff that is just wrong, even in the skateboard world.

One website says The Ashtray, aka Murdy Skatepark in Huntington Beach, was built in 1962. Another one says 1971. Those are wrong, I know this, because I lived in Huntington Beach when the skatepark actually was built. According to the H.B. city website, Murdy Park itself was built in 1971, so that’s where that date comes from. The park is on Goldenwest Street, just north of Warner Avenue. The official address of the park if 7000 Norma Avenue. But the skatepark, that was built in either late 1993 or 1994, I can’t remember exactly. I know the small Huntington Beach High skatepark, by the track, was built in 1994, a little while after Murdy skatepark was built. The Murdy Park Skatepark was the first of the modern wave of public, concrete, skateparks built in California. This was the “proof of concept” skatepark, to make sure the idea of a public skatepark would actually work.

There are a lot of videos about different aspects of the history of skateboarding on the YouTube, and you can watch them for a more in depth look at it. Skateboarding seems to have started in the late 1950’s, probably in San Diego. There was the first big wave of popularity, and a big backlash against skateboarding, in 1965-66. Then it died down, went underground, but didn’t die completely. A bunch of kids stuck with it, and set the stage for the next wave of popularity.

The next wave of skateboarding popularity blew up in about 1975, this time with much better urethane wheels, which were much better than the old clay (or even steel) wheels. Personally, I first rode a skateboard in 1976, and bought a green plastic Scamp board for $11.92, at the Western Auto (a local hardware store) in Willard, Ohio, in 1977. Us 4th and 5th graders in Ohio had no idea what was happening in the “real” skateboard world back then, except for a few stolen glances at one kid’s older brother’s skate magazines. We just did rockwalks, 360’s, and rode down little hills.

The steel edged bench at Murdy Skatepark. #steveemigphotos

Out here in California, skateboarding blew up even bigger, millions of boards were sold worldwide, with Logan Earth Ski, Makaha, and G&S being some of the most popular brands then. The first concrete skateparks were built mostly in California, and the skateboarding “fad” went on until maybe 1980 or 1981, at least in California.

I got into BMX in the early 1980’s, then living in Boise, Idaho. BMX landed me in Southern California in the summer of 1986. At that time, there were only three of the 1970’s era skateparks left, that I knew about. There was Pipeline Skatepark in Upland, California, and Del Mar Skate Ranch in Del Mar (near San Diego, CA), which was Tony Hawk’s home park in his early days of skating. The third surviving skatepark was Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville, Florida. So if you get on the 10 freeway and head east, then drive for about four days, you can find it. Stop about 5 miles before the Atlantic Ocean in Jacksonville, and you’ll find Kona Skatepark. It’s on the right, you’ll see it. It’s still open, after about 47 years.

But here in California, Del Mar Skate Ranch closed down in 1987, and Pipeline Skatepark closed down in 1988. From 1988 until 1993, there were no skateparks in Southern California, and that was the tail end of the third big wave of skateboarding popularity. For several years, there were thousands of skateboarders in California, and no skateparks at all. That was the same time that street skating was beginning to grow. But there were lots of vert skaters with no place to skate in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

During those years, a bunch of old school skaters sought out backyard pools to skate, and made treks out to the Nude Bowl, way out in the desert. Around 1988-89, a group of older pool skaters tried to get the city of Costa Mesa, where Vision Skateboards was located (That’s where I worked at the time), to build a public skatepark. But the city was worried about liability, they didn’t want to get sued every time someone got hurt at a skatepark. I know Jim Gray was part of the group, and maybe Paul Schmitt, and a few others. They worked to get a liability law passed in the state of California. The idea was that the law would prohibit people from suing cities if someone got injured in a skatepark. It took 3 or 4 years, and I don’t know the details, but the law got passed. The skaters then hit up Huntington Beach to build a park, and the first skatepark built was this tiny skatepark in Murdy Park. Like I said above, it was so small, the locals dubbed it The Ashtray. We joked that if they got sick of it, or of the skaters, they would wall off the little open end, and turn it into a duck pond.

The other bench and small curved wall at Murdy Park skatepark, well worn when I shot this photo in 2021. #steveemigphotos

What do you know? Nobody sued the city. There weren’t gangbangers or drug dealers hanging out 24/7, and skaters actually showed up and skated. The idea worked, and more public skateparks started to get built in other cities. One of the next skateparks built was the small, but bigger than Murdy, Huntington Beach High School skatepark. Skaters skated the high school a lot, and the police were always chasing skaters out of it. The H.B. High skatepark was was sessioned heavily until getting closed and bulldozed in 2008.

So little bitty Murdy Skatepark, The Ashtray, is now a bit of California skateboard history. It’s the first of the modern wave of public, concrete skateparks in California. There have been somewhere over 200 built since, I believe. So props to The Ashtray, for proving to city officials that public skateparks could work, and were, and still are, a good idea.

All kinds of good skaters have skated this place. H.B. local like Ed Templeton was one of the top local skaters when it was built, as was Jamie Thomas, I believe. The first well known female street skater, Elissa Steamer, lived right down the street in the late 1990’s, and she used to skate The Ashtray and nearby Oceanview high school on a regular basis. I think pretty much every skater around the H.B. area in the 1990’s has had a session or two at Murdy Park back in the day. It’s still there, now 30 years old, and still getting sessioned. Rock on Ashtray!

The stage ledge at Murdy Park skatepark. It reminds me of the stage at Huntington Beach High School that everyone used to skate and ride on BMX bikes, with the ramp up and ramp down, so that’s why I call it “the stage.” #steveemigphotos

Here are a couple videos from more recent years, of skating at Murdy Park skatepark.

H.B.’s Finest Murdy- Adam Dyet & Ryan Decenzo- around 2011

Slappy Days- Huntington Beach- 2021 Murdy skating at 1:37-2:18