The long fight over a gated beach in San Mateo County, owned by a billionaire venture capitalist and challenged by surfers, poses hard questions for anyone who loves both the ocean and property rights
A Gate On The Road To The Sea
For generations, surfers, anglers and families drove down a private road off Highway 1 in San Mateo County to reach Martins Beach, a crescent of sand south of Half Moon Bay. The previous owners charged a small parking fee and kept the gate open. Then, in 2008, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla bought the property for a reported 32.5 million dollars, and within a couple of years the gate was closed. What followed was one of the longest and most closely watched beach access battles in California history, one that began with surfers going to court, as CBS News reported in its coverage of how surfers sued for access to a blocked San Mateo County beach.
The Legal Fight
The case moved through the courts for years. In a suit brought by the Surfrider Foundation, a state appeals court ruled in 2017 that Khosla’s company needed a coastal development permit from the California Coastal Commission before closing off access, because blocking the road amounted to a change in the use of land under the Coastal Act. In 2018, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Khosla’s appeal, leaving the ruling in place. Separate efforts by the state to negotiate public access, including legislation authorizing the purchase of an easement, continued alongside the litigation.
The case raised fundamental questions. California’s constitution protects public access to navigable waters, and state law treats the area below the mean high tide line as public trust land. But the land above it, and the road leading to it, can be private property. Where does one end and the other begin?
The Libertarian Tension
For libertarians who surf, Martins Beach is uncomfortable territory. On one side is a core principle: private property rights. A person who buys land legally should be able to decide who crosses it. If the state can force an owner to keep a gate open, it can presumably force other owners to accommodate other public uses. The Coastal Commission, which played a central role in the case, is one of the most powerful land-use agencies in the country, with authority over development along the entire California coast. Libertarians have long criticized it for delays, heavy-handed decisions and its sweeping discretion over private land.
On the other side is a different set of considerations. The ocean is not private property. Access to the sea has been a shared resource since long before California became a state, recognized in common law traditions that predate modern regulation. When a single owner can close off the only practical route to a public beach, the result is that a public resource becomes, in effect, private. And the long history of the previous owners allowing access raised legal arguments about established public use.
Property Rights Are Not Absolute, And Neither Is Public Access
A thoughtful libertarian position might start by recognizing that property rights exist within a legal framework that includes easements, prescriptive rights and the public trust. These are not creations of modern regulators. They are long-standing features of property law, designed to balance private ownership with shared access to resources like waterways. Respecting property rights does not mean ignoring those traditions.
At the same time, the solution to access disputes should not be ever-expanding regulatory power. Negotiated easements, voluntary agreements and fair compensation for owners when the public wants access through private land are approaches that respect both property and the public interest. The state paying a fair price for an easement is far better than the state simply ordering an owner to open a gate.
There is also a question of fairness in how access disputes are resolved. Wealthy owners can afford years of litigation. Surfers and local residents depend on non-profit groups and volunteer lawyers. The state, for its part, wields enormous regulatory power that ordinary property owners cannot match. A system in which the outcome depends on who has the deepest pockets or the most bureaucratic leverage is not a system that respects anyone’s rights consistently.
Surfers And Power
Surf culture has always resisted being fenced in. Localism, access fights and battles with authorities over parking, permits and beach closures are part of surfing history up and down the coast. Surfers have fought gated communities at Hollister Ranch, wealthy homeowners in Malibu and bureaucrats who closed beaches without good reason. That instinct, to keep the ocean open, aligns with a deep libertarian suspicion of concentrated power, whether held by government or by the very wealthy.
What Martins Beach Teaches
The lesson of Martins Beach is that liberty is not served by simple slogans. Property rights matter. So does access to shared resources. So does limiting the power of agencies like the Coastal Commission. A just resolution respects all three, by protecting owners from arbitrary seizures, compensating them fairly when the public needs access, and ensuring that no single owner, however rich, can wall off the sea.
The waves at Martins Beach do not care who owns the road. They break the same way for billionaires and beach bums. A free society should find a way to let everyone reach them, without trampling the rights of the person whose land lies in between.