The Marriner Family celebrates nearly a century of exploration & entrepreneurialism in Laguna Beach
Story by MARRIE STONE
Picture a time in Laguna’s past when the Canyon Road provided the only access into town. Eucalyptus trees drooped over the dirt pass, filling the air with their minty scent. On the outskirts of town, which still clung to the coast, the smell of wood-burning stoves took over. Smoke hung in the trees.
Picture lobster and abalone so abundant that strollers along our rocky coastline could collect them by hand. Lobsters sold for a buck a sack. Villagers grew tired of eating abalone. But potable water, dispensed from a single pump far from town, required frequent trips out to the canyon.
Picture rumrunners using the secret coves along our coastline for their whiskey drops during Prohibition. Imagine the day when a gunfight broke out on the beach, and lucky locals scrambled to collect the burlap bags of dumped rum.
In those days, Laguna’s residents numbered no more than 300. They gathered around a long table in front of Hotel Laguna to socialize. Hollywood’s silent filmmakers and actors set up shop along the beaches and cliffs.
This was 1925, the year 26-year-old Richard “Tip” Marriner first came to town. He hopped a train from Lincoln, Nebraska and arrived in Los Angeles with two dollars in his pocket. “He had to live for weeks on oranges and soup cooked on a gas heater in his third floor room in an old wooden house at 9th and Hope Streets,” recalls his nephew, Harry Marriner. But he brought with him his father’s appetite for adventure, talent for journalism, and an entrepreneurial spirit he would continue passing down through the five generations of Marriners who have made Laguna their home.
Blazing a multigenerational trail into town
Seeing the ocean for the first time and getting a whiff of the salty air, Tip Marriner declared: “This is my kind of country!” He blazed the family’s trail into Laguna around the same time Coast Highway paved another path into town.
A journalist by trade, Tip began managing Laguna Beach Life in 1925 (the paper went on to become South Coast News, which lasted until 1960), and distributed the LA Times in our area for 35 years. His own father had been a journalist in England before he boarded a clipper ship and set sail to Australia in the year 1877. Henry Marriner would complete two trips around the world by boat before settling in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Courtesy of Marriner Family Photo Archives
Richard “Tip” Marriner readies for an aerial photography trip over Laguna
Although Tip had found his final home, it didn’t quell his sense of adventure. He soon took to the skies as a photographer, taking some of the earliest aerial photographs of Laguna Beach, which he would turn into a series of colorful postcards to sell in what would become Laguna’s iconic Marriner’s Stationery store.
The founding of Marriner’s Stationery and Booksellers
Two years after arriving in Laguna, Tip hatched a plan. Sacrificing his scanty assets and assuming a big loan, he purchased Walt Stromerson’s photo shop –located near the old Lifeguard Tower and across from South Coast Theater – for $1,500. He delivered newspapers to supplement his meager income from the store. By 1929, business was so good Tip moved the store to a larger location by the White House Café.
While the rest of the country suffered under the Great Depression, Laguna was building its infrastructure. By the mid-20s, the Laguna Beach County Water District was established. Coast Highway made the town more accessible. And, in 1927, the city was able to incorporate. “Local food sources from fruit trees and gardens kept life affordable,” says Mike Marriner, Sr. (Tip’s grandson). “There was abundant food from the ocean, too.” All this allowed Laguna’s small businesses to prosper during difficult times.
Marriner’s Stationery soon blossomed into a thriving family business. Tip and his wife, Frances, welcomed their first son in 1927, the same year the store opened. Willard (Bill) Marriner grew up in the shop and would spend the bulk of his life running his father’s store, passing it down to his own two boys – Mike and Norm.
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Courtesy of Marriner Family Photo Archives
Marriner’s Stationery and Booksellers, circa 1930s: (L-R) Tip Marriner, George Henry, Christina Reed, Jack Pope, R. MacDonald, George Henry, and McChesney Bethea
In 1951 the Marriners completed construction and moved to a larger building on Forest Avenue. They expanded the shop, selling typewriters, books, and office furniture.
A 1975 piece printed in the Laguna News Post reported: “By 1951 Grandpa Tip and Daddy Bill took son Norm as an advisor in toys (he broke them) and magazines (he ate them). Typewriters were added along with son Mike in 1954. He was a specialist in typewriters (sticking keys together and chewing on covers). Business was booming and so was the family. Dave came along in 1955 and, to keep the profit and loss statement in balance, toys had to go – especially footballs.”
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Courtesy of Marriner Family Photo Archives
A view inside Marriner’s Stationery, circa 1951
“One time I went in looking for a nib for an antique pen I had bought,” longtime Laguna resident Ann Christoph wrote in the Laguna Beach Independent in 2015. “It wasn’t even as new as a fountain pen, it was the kind you dip into an inkwell. Mel rummaged around behind the counter and came up with a new pen point that fit the old pen perfectly. Need ink too? Of course they had that in whatever color desired.”
“I’ve always tried to put a label on what it was about the store that made it so special,” says Mike Marriner, Sr. “It wasn’t a tangible thing. I think people liked that it was a family-run business, that it had a little history, and it fostered a staff that had a special connection to the community. It was the closest thing to a social network before the Internet. Not just our store, but all of downtown Laguna. We had the pharmacy, the meat shop, the bakery – all the basics were there. Locals couldn’t go anywhere else. There was no Fashion Island. Forest Avenue was the heart of this community.”
Unearthing the Laguna Woman
The Marriners aren’t only defined by their commitment to our community and an entrepreneurial spirit. There’s also a strong streak of curiosity, adventure, and discovery. It’s what prompted great-grandfather Henry to board that clipper ship in 1877, and Tip to take to the sky.
It’s little surprise that Tip’s nephew, Harry, and his sister, Carla, spent their childhood exploring the hills and valleys of Laguna’s canyons. They played in Robber’s Cave, wondering about the holes drilled into the walls to harness horses and hold rope ladders. Ed Marriner (Tip’s brother) found an old beekeeper’s house with rooms wallpapered in newsprint from the 1890s.
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Courtesy of Marriner Family Photo Archives
Harry and Carla posing in Robber’s Cave (now known as Dripping Springs Cave), circa 1954. (Note the peg holes used for tying horses, rope ladders, and hanging items.)
But the best discovery happened on one of Laguna’s typical warm and sunny days in 1933. Ed and his pal, Howard Wilson, heard tales of construction crews on St. Ann’s Drive making some interesting finds. The boys had a taste for archaeology. “Howard had already amassed a sizable collection of stone tools, arrow points, carved shells, and cooking utensils left behind by now vanished peoples,” Howard Tumbull reported in 2003.
“My friend Howard Wilson and I used a rod to poke a hole in the dirt bank after getting off the bus to see if we could find any Indian things,” Ed wrote. “One day we hit a hard spot and dug in. He ran home to get a shovel and pick. We found an Indian skull and he ran home with it.”
That Indian skull came to be known as the Laguna Beach Woman. The first carbon dating revealed the remains were 17,000 years old, though revised measurements suggest it originated during the Holocene era 11,700 years ago. Nonetheless, she’s recognized as the oldest human skull ever discovered in the western hemisphere.
The end of an era
Back in town, half a century later, the business began to suffer. Although Mike and Norm expanded Marriner’s Stationery to several locations around South Orange County throughout the 1970s and 80s, they foresaw the future and knew what was coming. Big business began creeping in, squeezing out the smaller mom and pop shops.
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Courtesy of Marriner Family Photo Archives
A view of Marriner’s Stationery in the 1970s
The Marriners continued running the store until the mid 1990s. But they had the foresight to diversify. They began developing supply chain software, a business Mike ran until 2011. “In the 1970s, Norm and I created software to make business more efficient. That category of retail was challenged, but software was still useable for other types of retail. We were able to make a living.” Though he sold the software seven years ago, it’s still being used today.
The birth of Roadtrip Nation: Mike Jr. continues his great-grandfather’s vision with a 21st century twist
All these industrious family traits crystalized around the turn of this century when Mike Jr. was attending Pepperdine University. Mike majored in biology, but it quickly became clear science wasn’t the path he wished to pursue. What he wanted remained a hazy mystery. Roadtrip Nation was born out of that common college dilemma: What should I do with my life? “What felt like a massive crisis,” Mike says, “became a massive opportunity.”
In 2001, Mike Jr. took to the road with his pals, Nathan Gebhard, Brian McAllister, and Amanda Gall. Together they traveled across the US in a 1985 broken-down lime green RV, interviewing anyone who would talk to them – the chairman of Starbucks; a lobsterman from Maine; the director of Saturday Night Live; the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic; the first female Supreme Court Justice of the United States; head stylist for Madonna; and the CEO of National Geographic Ventures. When the trip concluded, they’d interviewed 140 men and women about their unconventional and highly personalized paths.
From the project came the company Roadtrip Nation and its website (www.roadtripnation.com), of which today Mike is co-founder and President. It also gave rise to four New York Times bestselling books, including Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life and Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What To Do.
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Courtesy of Roadtrip Nation Photo Archives
Mike with Roadtrip Nation RVs
Today the media company reaches over 60 million households, 14 million students, and over 12,000 schools each year. Roadtrip Nation, based in Costa Mesa with over 90 employees, has been awarded the Excellence in Programming award by American Public Television, two Telly awards, and won an Emmy in 2019. Mike has been featured on news outlets including the NBC Today Show, CBS Early Show, BBC News, Outside, Forbes, Esquire, USA Today, and many others.
Turns out, Tip Marriner had a lot in common with his great-grandson. He would have made an ideal Roadtrip Nation interview subject, advising Mike and his friends to cast their nets wide, combine their quirky interests, and use that synergy to create something new. For Tip, melding his background in journalism with his passion for aerial photography, his fearlessness in hopping trains and taking risks, and his entrepreneurial spirit was the exact recipe for enduring success.
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Courtesy of Marriner Family Photo Archives
A typical colored postcard created by Tip Marriner from his aerial photography
Today Mike Jr. models that approach. He calls himself a social entrepreneur, carrying on Tip’s mission of bringing communities together. “When you think about it,” Mike Sr. says, “the stationery store was all about communicating. Sending photographs and letters and postcards. Connecting communities together. Mikey continues that tradition.”
Now a new generation of Marriners has arrived. Mike Jr. met his wife Katy at that same Thurston Middle School bus stop in Laguna where he met his lifelong pal and business partner, Nathan. They have two children, Alia and Tyler. In total, there are six Marriners attending Laguna Beach schools: Sophie, Olivia, Klee, Forest, Alia, and Tyler. The Marriner name will continue on – with deep roots and broad branches all across our town.
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Photo by Mary Hurlbut
The current three generations of Marriners celebrating Hospitality Night in downtown Laguna: Mike Jr., Tyler (4), Katy, Mike Sr., and Alia (7)