Victoria Beach: Laguna's Most Beautiful Secret Is 85 Steps Down a Concrete Staircase

Laguna Is Not a Secret. Victoria Beach Is.

Millions of people visit Laguna Beach every year. Main Beach gets crowded by 9am on summer weekends, parking becomes a negotiation with the universe, and Coast Highway turns into a slow procession of rental cars. Victoria Beach operates on a different logic. It's about 2.3 miles south of Main Beach, accessible via a narrow public staircase off Victoria Drive, and the people who go there tend to be locals or the friends of locals. There's no parking lot, no sign pointing you in, and a 60-foot concrete tower built in 1926 sitting at the base of a private bluff that stops everyone in their tracks the first time they see it.

La Tour

La Tour — as it's known locally — was built by a Laguna Beach family whose cliffside home sat 60 feet above the sand. Rather than walk the long way around, they built a private spiral staircase tower to descend directly to the beach. The tower is on private land and not publicly accessible, but it's fully visible from the beach and has the quality of a discovered thing — you almost can't believe it's real. It's been photographed approximately a million times and somehow rarely feels overexposed in person.

How to Get There

From Coast Highway, turn onto Victoria Drive and begin the search for street parking. Weekday mornings and off-season visits are your best bet; summer weekends require patience and early arrival. Once parked, find the public beach access staircase — marked but not prominent — and walk down. The beach opens up below and the tower will be immediately to your right.

What You'll Find

Victoria Beach is a wide cove with rockier edges than most Laguna beaches. At low tide, the tidepool formations on the north end are exceptional: anemones, urchins, small crabs, the full inventory. The water is clear, the waves moderate, and the bluffs above block some of the wind. It feels quieter than the surrounding Laguna beaches even when it isn't, simply because there's no commercial infrastructure — no vendors, no rental chairs, nothing.

When to Go

Early morning in the off-season (October through April) is the move. Come on a weekday in November and you may have a tidepool the size of a swimming pool entirely to yourself. Summer evenings around sunset, after the midday crowds thin, are worth the parking struggle. Avoid summer holiday weekends unless you arrive before 8am.

The Bottom Line

The reason Victoria Beach stays local is that it requires minor effort. No easy parking, no commercial strip nearby, no accidental discovery. That friction is the entire value proposition — and the reason it's still worth knowing about.