 In 1875, James McFadden and his younger brother Robert acquired the landing and for the next nineteen years operated a thriving commercial trade and shipping business.However, the bay was not yet a true harbor and sand bars and a treacherous bay entrance caused the McFadden Brothers to move the shipping business to the oceanfront by constructing a large pier on the sand spit that would become the Balboa Peninsula.The site was ideal because a submarine canyon (Newport Submarine Canyon), carved along with Newport Bay by the ancient Santa Ana River, provided calm waters close to the shore.