Santa Monica Pier centennial September 7, 2009

The Santa Monica Pier, the symbolic western end point of Route 66, will get a lot of attention this week when it marks its 100th anniversary on Wednesday.

National Public Radio has an excellent story about the pier and its history, including this:

Fishermen have been flocking to the pier’s edge since its early days. Olaf Olsen, a retired sailor who visited the pier in the 1920s and 1930s, may even have inspired E.C. Segar’s spinach-loving comic book character.

“The artist who drew Popeye, he and his assistant would come down to the pier every day, and every day they would rent a skiff, which they would take off the end of the pier, and they would discuss story ideas,” Harris says. “Every day they walked to the end of the pier, they encountered [Olsen], one of the fishing boat captains. … It turned out that [Olsen's look] became the physical model for the cartoon character.”