William Morris Davis was born in 1850. He graduated from Harvard University in 1869 and thereafter pursued a lengthy professional and largely academic career. Davis is best known for his work, the first of its kind, which explains the cycle of stream development from youth to old age assuming a static landscape. For this he became known as the "Father of American Geography," at a time when the term geomorphology had not yet been adopted. Late in life, he became a guest lecturer associated with the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Today, his theory is regarded as simplistic, because it does not take into account tectonic and other dynamic forces that could affect the natural gravity-dependent processes of stream development. Nevertheless, this failing, such as it is, does not detract from his acute observations of coastal geomorphic features in Malibu.

While on a pleasure drive in 1927 along the newly opened State Highway in Malibu, Davis became interested in the geomorphic character of the coast. Pursuing that interest, in 1929 he became aware of marine terraces in the Point Dume "triangle" which became the basis of a paper an early draft of which he presented at annual meetings of the Geological Society of America in 1931. Apparently, in some quarters at least, his findings were misinterpreted (Davis, 1933, fn. p. 1047) and may have been met with a certain amount of amusement. Because he postulated that the terraces may be related not only to regional uplift but also to glaciation, a matter he said needed to be considered. Published later (Davis, 1933), the title of his paper unfortunately suggests actual glaciation in the Santa Monica Mountains whereas in it he clearly meant only to indicate possible evidence of glaciation. Actually, his thesis is simply that marine terraces in Malibu are of Pleistocene age and therefore might be due to either regional uplift or sea-level lowering due to glacial withdrawal, or a combination of those processes. And that is true.

Davis recognized three marine terraces in the vicinity of Point Dume he called the Malibu, the Dume, and the Monic platforms. The Monic platform is that presently being formed. It is easily observed at lower low tides between Paradise Cove and the salient of Point Dume, and at Latigo Point. We now know that there is a fourth such feature discovered by Yerkes and Wentworth (1965) who called it "terrace C," and later named the "Corral terrace" by Birkeland (1972,p. 435). Davis was not aware of the evidence of it at Point Dume, and for this he has been criticized by at least one author. In fact, the Point Dume area was fenced off when the State Highway was constructed. Davis notes that despite "... urgent and repeated request for admission .... to the jealously guarded pastures that extend from the highway to the extremity of Point Dume, permission to cross them has not been granted by the owners of the extensive estate in which the Point is included..." (op. cit., p. 1090). He of course was referring either to May Knight Rindge herself or managers of her Marblehead Land Company.

Davis' paper contains fascinating photographs, sketches of the local coastal localities, and considerable analytical data. Its review I consider mandatory for the serious student of Malibu history or geomorphology. Davis needs to be remembered with respect. Detailed, professional observations of Malibu's geology began with him.

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