Redondo Beach, California, Wyland Whaling Wall 31

History of the Redondo Beach, Wyland Whaling Wall 31

-Gray Whale Migration

In 1991, the city of Redondo Beach, California, invited Wyland to paint a large mural on the Southern California Edison Power Plant in an effort to revitalize the old, unsightly structure.  Although the city estimated it would take 12 months to complete, Wyland, known for saying, “When you work for free, you have to work fast,” insisted he could finish it in 12 days. True to his word, using over 3,000 gallons of paint and covering nearly an acre and a half, the 622-foot-long, 10-story-high wall was completed in an
astonishing 11 days.

In addition to nine life-size gray whales, Wyland painted his first blue whale, over 100 feet long,accompanied by Pacific bottlenose dolphins and giant, 70-foot-high kelp forests reaching the ocean’s surface. Not only was the mural one of the largest of its kind in the United States, but a ring of powerful lights around the building helped it serve as a beacon at night for boats far offshore, who could identify the coast by the sight of the giant power plant and its pod of migrating whales.

Environmental Notes

• The annual great migration of the gray whale from the Arctic to the coast of Mexico is one of nature’s greatest feats. Each of these animals travels over 12,000 miles.
• The long migration includes many perils for the gray whales, not least of which are human impacts from ship strikes and noise pollution. By the time Wyland painted his gray whale migration mural in Redondo Beach, Southern California’s coastal waters were reaching crisis levels of pollution, with millions of gallons of upstream waste finding their way through streets and
  channels into local bays.
• Clean water and healthy oceans are among the Wyland Foundation’s greatest legacies. Foundation programs like Streams of Hope, Myvolunteer Water Project, and our traveling clean water mobile science center are designed to educate and provide people of all ages with the tools they need to reduce pollution and improve water quality.

Whaling wall 31

Redondo Beach, California
586 Feet Long x 95 Feet High
Dedicated June 24, 1991
By John Bryson, CEO of Southern California Edison

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