Santa Monica Camera Obscura, Camera obscura mechanism in Palisades Park, Santa Monica, United States

Santa Monica Camera Obscura projects live images of the surrounding landscape onto a white screen using a rotating periscope and mirror system. The device sits inside a building at Ocean Avenue where visitors look through the mechanism to see the beach and surrounding area in real time.

Robert F. Jones, mayor of Santa Monica and nephew of cofounder John P. Jones, installed the camera obscura on April 21, 1899. It first stood at the North Beach Bath House and was one of the stops on the Balloon Route streetcar tour of Los Angeles. In the early 1900s it was moved up to Palisades Park, then called Linda Vista Park, and since November 1955 it has occupied a building designed by Weldon J. Fulton.

The adjoining space, once a senior center, is now a community art center; the camera obscura is reached through it and is free to enter during the center's regular hours. The building has been closed to the public since 2020, when it shut temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The camera obscura sits on a bluff above the beach and is accessed via stairs from the promenade along Ocean Avenue. Morning or early afternoon visits often provide the clearest images on the white screen.

The device was one of the stops on the Balloon Route streetcar tour of Los Angeles, which carried tourists between attractions in the region. It was first set up at the North Beach Bath House before being moved up to Palisades Park, then called Linda Vista Park, in the early 1900s.