This very early balsa wood board, a one-of-a-kind creation, was handcrafted by legendary California waterman Preston “Pete” Peterson (1913 - 1983) after he first saw the lightweight tropical wood used as a surfboard material while visiting Hawaii in 1932. The unique board features a redwood stringer and noseblock and a mahogany veneer deck to keep the fragile balsa from being stoved in by knee paddling. Originally, the board was waterproofed by multiple layers of varnish, but sometime in the early 1950s it was coated with a relatively new and much more durable material—fiberglass—by Pacific Glass, among the very first in the trade, and it bears a stamp with the company’s logo. Pete Peterson was an all time great surfer, open ocean swimmer, racing paddleboarder and intrepid Santa Monica lifeguard. He won the Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships four times between 1932 and 1941 and during the 1960s he won multiple championships as a tandem surfer (with various female partners) including the 1966 Makaha International on the west side of Oahu and the World Championships held that same year in San Diego, California. In addition to being an accomplished pioneer surfboard maker, Peterson was an innovative designer of lifeguarding rescue equipment. He was also the principal shaper of wooden boards for Pacific System Homes, a Los Angeles maker of pre-fabricated housing that developed a sideline as a surfboard builder in 1929. Peterson may well have made this board in their factory. This was Peterson’s personal surfboard before being purchased in 1933 by Dave Simmons, known as “Zuke.” The nickname was painted onto the board by Simmons’s brother as a surprise. Simmons rode the board at San Onofre, one of the most popular surf spots in Southern California during the ’30s and early ’40s and he was among the first members of the San Onofre Surfing Club, established in 1952.