Cal Poly’s Pier has changed throughout its history from industrial use to a center for marine research and education. For thousands of years the Chumash Native Americans lived on the Central Coast, including the Avila Beach area. In 1867 the town of Avila was established when the Miguel Avila family subdivided Rancho San Miguelito. In 1873 John Harford built the Harford Pier to facilitate shipping and trading on the Central Coast. The present-day Avila Pier was constructed in 1908, the same year Union Oil and other companies began building what was then the largest oil pipeline, laying over 200 miles of pipe from the San Joaquin Valley to Avila; the first oil arrived at Port San Luis in March 1910. From 1914 to 1922 the Pacific Coast Railway Company built a third pier in San Luis Obispo Bay for commercial shipping, which Union Oil Company of California later leased and expanded, helping make Avila one of the largest crude oil shipping ports in the world. In 1923 Harford Pier closed to oil shipping and all oil thereafter moved through the Pacific Coast Railway Pier. In 1929 the oil facility was abandoned during the Great Depression, and 1400 feet of Harford Pier was demolished to aid navigation in the bay. In 1941 Union Oil acquired the Pacific Coast Railway pier and renamed it the Union Oil Pier; during the war years the U.S. Naval fleet fueled there, and the Union Oil tanker Montebello was sunk by a torpedo near San Simeon only hours after fueling at the port, though no lives were lost. In 1942 Lt. General Dwight D. Eisenhower sent Union Oil a telegraph thanking its employees for their efforts during World War II. In 1954 the Port San Luis Harbor District was created to revitalize Harford Pier and the surrounding area, and in 1972 the newly founded California Coastal Commission set sustainable goals for Port San Luis. In 1983 a fierce March storm destroyed the Union Oil Pier, and three employees were rescued from the collapsing structure by the crew of the Paul Revere. From 1984 into the mid 1990s, a modern steel and concrete pier was constructed in the old pier’s original footprints, extending over 3000 feet into San Luis Obispo Bay and transporting an average of 8 to 19 million barrels of oil products per year until Unocal ended its oil operations there. In 2001 Unocal donated the pier to Cal Poly’s Center for Coastal Marine Sciences, marking its transition to research use.