It’s finally official. Hermosa Beach is the best U.S. mainland beach of 2004. Well, at least according to the national magazine Reader’s Digest, which named it so in its May issue.

“This is a great boost to our tourism campaign, offering publicity for our town’s hotels, restaurants and shops,” said Kevin McCarthy, vice chair of tourism for the chamber. “The economy is turning around, too – and travelers are back on the road. Reader’s Digest has put us on the map.”

Editors of the well-read and well-known publication chose Hermosa Beach as the best beach, a selection that’s part of the magazine’s “America’s 100 Best” series that also features items like best roller coaster, best fishing, best getaway, best layover and best zoo.

Jacob Young, who is the executive editor at Reader’s Digest, said the selection was based on a criteria focused on how such selections would serve its readers.

“The circulation of the magazine is 10 million, and we’ve got people from rural areas and from big cities. We needed to not pick some exclusive beach that you can only get to if you live there, but something that was really accessible to a lot of people,” said Young. “Obviously, beaches in Hawaii are terrific but you’ve got to have about $2,000 just to get from the mainland to Hawaii. There are some terrific beaches in Florida, but again, not everyone can travel there.

“Hermosa was really appealing to us because it was near a big city and on a good traffic day you can get to Los Angeles from Hermosa in about a half-hour. It’s a beach where there is sort of something for everyone. There’s the classic California beach culture with volleyball, surfing and things like that; but it’s also a very family-friendly and kid-friendly beach, and it has great sand.”

The small feature states, “Hawaii’s beaches are the unquestionable champs, but our pick for best continental U.S. sand is Hermosa Beach, an hour’s drive from downtown L.A. Hermosa is Spanish for ‘beautiful’ and this laid-back oasis fits the bill, boasting 1.5 miles of sparkling white sand, a boardwalk (‘The Strand’) and the waters of the Pacific. No surprise that it made the Travel Channel’s list of America’s Best Beaches. Serious volleyball abounds; there’s year-round surfing for those who’d like to shoot the curl. Stroll, bike, or blade down the boardwalk; or just relax and soak up the sun. It’s all good.”

According to Young, Hermosa Beach is a selection in the publication’s first list of 100 best things about America. The magazine has 40 million readers and given such a large circulation size, it could afford to put together a “Best Of” list. Virtually every staff member contributed to the special feature in some way and the magazine spent several weeks brainstorming the different categories. Once the categories were set, each staff member researched the best of their assigned categories by consulting with experts in the particular fields.

“We put together the special section within the magazine and there are also features, ” said Young. “The special section is mostly made up of little items but within the magazine there are also features mostly about people who we picked as the best. For example, there is an ER staff in Baltimore that is unfortunately right in the middle of a high-crime area, but they have learned to treat gunshot wounds like nobody else, so the innovations they have come up with by necessity have, in turn, helped people with gunshot wounds survive all over the country and all over the world. So it’s really a collection of things with a lot of cool items that we came up with that were really great and surprising, and one of them was ‘Best Beach’.”

According to the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce, Hermosa Beach was founded April 1, 1901, and the first pier was built in 1904 entirely out of wood, extending 500 feet out into the ocean. Hermosa Avenue was the first street paved and The Strand was constructed out of wooden planks. The entire city of Hermosa Beach is about 1.3 square miles with a population of about 20,000.

“The Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau is especially pleased with this national recognition by the Reader’s Digest, which has the largest circulation of any magazine in the country,” said the chamber’s executive director, Carla Merriman. “The magazine is read by seniors and young families, both groups being in the target market for the chamber’s current advertising campaign. Our organization has spent $90,000 of our own funds to promote Hermosa Beach as a tourist destination in Sunset Magazine and Sunday newspaper travel sections in the five-county area. It looks like our efforts have paid off.”