Pioneering Southern California surfer John Edward Owen Larronde (1915-1994) was a grandson of Basque sheepherder Pierre Larronde, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1851, shrewdly invested in downtown real estate and prospered. Born in Los Angeles, John Larronde grew up in Hollywood. In 1921 his father, Pedro Domingo Larronde, a retired Franco-American Baking Co. executive, ordered redwood surfboards from Honolulu for each of his three children. That marked the beginning of John Larronde's life-long love of surfing and the ocean.

Surfing was still relatively new to Southern California in the 1920s, having been popularized by Hawaiian waterman George Freeth in 1907. Larronde was part of a small but active group of surfers from San Diego to Malibu, joining the West Coast Paddleboard Association, building his own surfboards and entering competitions, including the 1938 National Surfing and Paddleboard Championship in Long Beach. After earning a degree at UC Davis and military service in World War II, he returned to Southern California, building a beachfront house on Malibu's Latigo Shore Drive in 1955, his home for almost four decades. A residential contractor and all-around waterman--paddleboarder, diver, and spearfisherman--he continued to surf, teach others, and gather photos and other important historical material that now make up this collection. An enthusiastic snow skier and hunter, he was one of the founders of the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep in 1964. Four years later, he also was a founding officer of the Malibu Historical Society, and played an early role in the creation of Ventura's short-lived (1992-1994) "C" Street Surfing Museum, which displayed his 1921 surfboard and other material from his personal archive.