Point Dume Natural Area affords a vista of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Santa Catalina Island.

Point Dume was named by George Vancouver in 1793 in honor of Padre Francisco Dumetz of Mission San Buenaventura.

[5] Nial O’Malley Keyes, in his book Blubber Ship, reported large numbers of whales were caught within a mile of Malibu (in or before 1934), a reference to the Point Dume operation.

Post-World War II the bluff became slowly settled by independent-minded people, who planted trees and other non-native flora among their single-family homesteads.

By 2007, many of the simple homesteads were torn down to make way for mansions and mega-mansions behind walls, many with expansive ocean views, while other large homes were surrounded by mature trees.

These tidepools serve as concealed shelters for a variety of marine creatures such as crabs, urchins, mussels, octopus, and small fish like sculpin and juvenile garibaldi when the tide ebbs away.

There are over one hundred species of birds, including brown pelicans, plovers, wrens, roadrunners, burrowing owls, falcons, and hawks.

[2] Offshore, the nutrient-rich and frigid waters of the Pacific enhance the entire marine food web, from primary producers such as algae and zooplankton to apex predators like sand sharks, bottlenose dolphins, and gray whales.

[10] Some of the primary offshore faults have experienced 3–5 kilometers of cumulative displacement, with evidence of current activity through seafloor deformation.

A structure near Sycamore Knoll, transverse to the main faults, may be significant for regional earthquake hazard analysis, potentially acting as a rupture segment boundary.

[13] The music video "Sandcastles in the Sand" for the TV show How I Met Your Mother was filmed on Point Dume State Beach.