In 1881, the Pismo Beach Wharf was built just north of the end of Main Street, two blocks north of the current pier, giving local farmers and ranchers a cheaper way to ship products to market than the railroad. A storm damaged it in December 1884, when heavy seas tore 250 feet off the wharf and sent a pile driver, a donkey engine, and hundreds of sacks of barley and beans into the water. The wharf was rebuilt and extended another 100 feet, but storms and repairs continued throughout its life. Its end came in January 1904, when a storm collapsed 100 feet of wharf into the surf, and by 1905 only a row of pilings remained across the beach. Later winter storms sometimes exposed tips of pilings from the sand where the wharf complex and the Café Royal dance hall had once stood at Main Street, and as late as the 1980s public works crews cut exposed pilings deeper for safety until no trace of the old wharf remained in recent memory. In 1923, W.W. Ward formed the Pismo Beach Pier and Amusement Company to build a new pier two blocks south of the original wharf. Completed in a little over a year, the Pismo Beach Pier reached 1740 feet in length, with a wharf structure at the end suitable for ships to dock, and it was dedicated on July 4, 1924. In February 1926, less than two years later, a storm destroyed the docking facility and seriously damaged the rest of the pier, leaving the beach covered with lumber and pilings; the pier lost 115 pilings and the end was never rebuilt. During World War Two, the pier was used for reconnaissance, with a lookout on the pier, lookout posts in the hillsides above Shell Beach, soldiers stationed in Shell Beach, and horseback patrols on the beach. By the end of the war it had become a public recreational pier. In 1949 it received needed upgrades and repairs, replacing damaged or missing untreated original eucalyptus pilings with creosote-treated fir pilings. Storms in January and February 1952 weakened the pier and knocked off nearly 200 feet; a year later repairs added back 100 feet and were completed on July 3, 1953. The pier was extended 105 feet in 1961. Storms in early 1983 again caused major damage, breaking parts of the pier into debris while floating pilings rolled in and out with the surf. A rebuilt pier with the iconic 4-diamond design was constructed in 1985, incorporating sections of the original 1924 pier. In 2016, the Pismo Beach City Council ordered a full reconstruction, and work began in 2017 to upgrade timber pilings with steel pilings and replace timber braces, decking, and handrails, as well as improve the water and electrical systems. The project finished ahead of schedule, and the pier reopened to the public on October 20, 2018.