Monterey Peninsula Factoids

Fish Culture

2009-06-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

The fish in Monterey Bay brought diversity to the land as well. Rumsen Indians had a fishing village for centuries at what is now Custom House Plaza. Portuguese whalers arrived in the 1850s, about the time Chinese fishermen landed at Point Lobos. Fresh fish markets were limited until the railroad arrived in 1874, then Italian fishermen moved to Monterey with larger boats to catch fish for San Francisco buyers, according to Tim Thomas, historian at the Monterey Maritime and History Museum. With growing competition, discriminatory laws were passed to limit Chinese fishing, so the “Chinatown” then in Pacific Grove turned to squid that nobody else wanted. Japanese divers arrived in 1895, settled on Cannery Row and started harvesting the abalone no one else valued. Monterey started focusing on sardines soon after that and Sicilian fishermen with large purse seiners moved in to catch tons of them for the 41 Cannery Row processing plants that were booming into the 1940s. Japanese fishermen dominated salmon fishing by then and owned 80% of the businesses on Fisherman’s Wharf until World War II erupted and they were forced to move to inland camps.

Photo: Monterey Wharf and waterfront. Ca. 1907. Credit: Monterey Public Library, California History Room

Seaside Blossoms

2009-06-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

Seaside is the most racially and culturally diverse community on the Monterey Peninsula, a direct result of its history with the Army. Before 1950 it was a sprawling, unincorporated area known as “North Monterey” with an array of chicken farms, one major housing subdivision, some shacks left over from the Depression and some quickly built, affordable housing put up for soldiers’ families and civilian support staff during World War I and World War II. After President Harry Truman ordered the Army integrated in 1948, military officials decided to transfer all the black troops to Fort Ord because they were worried about racial violence elsewhere. The surge of black troops and their families into Fort Ord more than doubled the population of Seaside in the early ‘50s, and it incorporated as a city in 1954. When the base closed 40 years later and the soldiers left, many Latinos and Asians moved into the housing built for troops, helping change the racial and cultural mix of the city yet again.

Chinatown

2009-06-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

Pacific Grove recognizes a Chinese heritage, but that was basically a “Chinatown” fishing settlement that burned down in 1906 when the land owner wanted to convert the property to oceanfront villas. “Chinatown” was at Point Alones, which now holds Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, next to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Chinese fishermen who moved there in the 1850s and ‘60s built wooden shanties in a one-street village that eventually caught as much as 100 tons of squid a year, which was dried on their rooftops and racks that stretched to Lovers Point. The stench was a major concern when the Pacific Improvement Company wanted to subdivide and sell the 30 acres leased to the Chinese. The tenants refused to leave. In May 1906, on a night many of the Chinese were away watching their children graduate from Pacific Grove schools, an explosive fire believed started by coal oil swept through “Chinatown” and the Pacific Grove Volunteer Fire Department found the only hose they brought to fight the fire was slashed and unusable. The next day the property owner put a fence around the area and hired guards to keep the Chinese from rebuilding. Some of the inhabitants from PG"s Chinatown had fled the San Francisco earthquake disaster just weeks before.

Photo: Chinatown procession along Ocean View Boulevard in 1905. Credit:Pacific Grove Museum.

Green Gold

2009-05-22T18:19:00.000-07:00

Salinas may be best known as the birthplace of Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck, but it’s been lettuce not literature that has driven the area’s economy. For nearly a century, the city and the 60-mile long Salinas Valley have been called “The Salad Bowl of the Nation” because more than half the lettuce eaten in the U.S. has been grown on those fertile fields. The cool climate is ideal for lettuce and allows three – sometimes four – crops a year. The growers in the 1920s learned how to pack head lettuce in ice so it could be shipped all the way to the East Coast, expanding the market dramatically. Head lettuce became known as “iceberg” because of that packing method, and it dominated the fresh vegetable business through the 1980s. After a bag was invented in 1989 that can keep cut vegetables fresh for several days, ready-to-eat bags of salad popped onto the market, changing eating habits, tripling the value of lettuce crops and creating new markets for vegetables that can be mixed together for inventive salads. The more delicate leaf lettuce surpassed iceberg in acreage and income in 2002, as Salinas continued to be the nation’s major supplier of lettuce and salads. Note: a failed experiment to send iced lettuce east via rail was featured in East of Eden, both the Steinbeck book and the movie.

(Salinas Valley lettuce field courtesy of Stones55)

First Farms in Carmel Valley

2009-05-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

The agricultural roots of Carmel Valley are frequently traced to Spanish priests who, in the 1770s, planted crops and orchards to feed the new settlements at the missions. But the European presence actually ended the original farming that had been going on in the valley for nearly 4,000 years. Rumsen Indian families had learned centuries earlier to harvest seeds in the meadows, till and plant them with “digging sticks” and turn wildlands into gardens. They also learned how to detoxify the acorns in the woods and mill them into edible flour. It took 13 acres of hard seeds and hundreds of pounds of acorns to support each family, according to Mark Hyklema, an archeologist with the California Department of Parks and Recreation. The Rumsen, one of the 50 or so tribes generally called Ohlone, also burned their gardens periodically to control poison oak, clear the land and release new seeds. But after the Spanish arrived and started building settlements, they forbid the Ohlone fires and ended 40 centuries of Indian farming in Carmel Valley.

(Mortar hole for acorns apparently used by Rumsen Indians found in Garland Park courtesy of tsallam)

Watering the Flower People

2009-05-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

Back in the ‘60s, Carmel, fearing that it would become another Haight-Ashbury, adopted an ordinance against free-range hippies. The city council tried tried to ban “an extraordinary influx of undesirable and unsanitary visitors to the city, sometimes known as ‘hippies,’” finding that “unless proper regulations are adopted immediately the use and enjoyment of public property will be jeopardized if not entirely eliminated... for normal public use.” The ordinance banned climbing trees; sitting on monuments, fountains, fences, steps and planted areas; and lying on lawns (i.e., Devendorf Park). The California Supreme Court overturned the ordinance as discriminatory and unconstitutional. Then Carmel installed water sprinklers to discourage hippies from gathering in the parks. And perhaps to clean them up a little bit!

(Photo: Hippies in Haight-Ashbury in 1996 courtesy of
friscowebhed)

Dennis the Menace

2009-05-05T00:17:00.000-07:00

Hank Ketchum’s most popular legacy has continued without him since he died in his Pebble Beach home in June 2001. The cartoonist created“Dennis the Menace,” one of the best-loved kids of all time, in 1950 on a drawing board in his Carmel Woods home. Ketchum was 30 at the time and his real son, Dennis, was 4, when his first wife, Alice, stormed in one day to complain, “Your son is a menace.” Thus a legend was born. It was almost an instant hit and Ketchum opened a studio in Monterey and hired staff to help. He lived in Switzerland during the turbulent 1960s and into the ‘70s, then moved to Pebble Beach in 1977 and worked from a studio next to his home until 1988, when he bought an 1850s house behind Monterey’s Colton Hall to convert to a studio for the cartoon, comics, paperbacks, movie, TV series and even a musical. The cartoon Dennis has remained a mischievous 5-year-old throughout his 59-year career, and his middle-American family has remained locked in the 1950s. “In my world, the birds are always singing,” Ketchum told an interviewer in 1990. The cartoonist left another legacy locally, the ever-popular Dennis the Menace Park in Monterey’s El Estero. Ketchum designed it in 1952 and the Monterey Peninsula Jaycees built it. The real father and son were estranged most of their lives.

(Photo: Dennis the Menace Park courtesy of John3000)

The Duke of Del Monte

2009-04-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Samuel F.B. Morse had nearly personal control of Pebble Beach development for 50 years, setting out in 1919 to protect the majestic shoreline as “one of the greatest private parks in existence.” He built golf courses with scenic views and rimmed them with residential lots. Sales of the lots paid for the golf course development and tolls from the private 17 Mile Drive – at first 50 cents for a car or two-horse wagon, 25 cents for a saddle horse – paid for maintenance. The “Duke of Del Monte,” as Morse was known, had such control that not even a tree in Del Monte Forest could be removed without his personal approval. The control reflected the racism of the times, with deed restrictions prohibiting “Asiatics or Negroes” or descendents of the Turkish Empire from buying or otherwise owning, leasing or occupying property in Pebble Beach. The racial covenants were ironic in light of Morse's dream of having the United Nations located in Del Monte Forest. Those covenants were dropped as unenforceable in 1964 after the Civil Rights Act outlawed racial discrimination in the U.S. Morse died in 1969 and in 1978, Del Monte Properties became the Pebble Beach Company.

(Image: Bust of Morse at Pebble Beach golf sculpted by Richard MacDonald. Photo courtesy of E11y)

Morse Takes Over

2009-04-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

Samuel F.B. Morse was sent to the Monterey Peninsula in 1915 to liquidate the holdings of the Pacific Improvement Company, a land company formed in the 1860s by the “Big Four” railroaders of the day. He had been hired by one of them, Charles Crocker, after befriending Crocker’s son while both were students at Yale. Morse was overcome by the natural beauties he found here and decided this is where he wanted to stay and live. Partnering with the owner of a bank in San Francisco, Morse formed the Del Monte Properties Company and, in 1919, bought the bulk of the railroad holdings. For $1.3 million, the new company bought the posh Del Monte Hotel in Monterey (now the Naval Postgraduate School) with its companion race track (now the Monterey Fairgrounds), polo field, Del Monte Golf Course and Monterey County Water Works (now part of Cal-Am); the bulk of Pacific Grove, including the stunning shoreline, Pacific Grove Hotel (now the Holman Building) and many residential lots; 17 Mile Drive and the forests and beaches that surrounded it; and acreage in Carmel Valley. In all, Morse obtained 7,000 mostly undeveloped acres on the Peninsula.

Unworkable Hair

2009-04-13T11:11:00.001-07:00

During the Age of Aquarius, there was no doubt the Monterey Peninsula was something of a hippie mecca. And, contrary to a popular stereotype, some of the hippies actually worked. The problem was when they lost their jobs and went to the Monterey unemployment office in 1970. As the popular song from 1971 went, "long-haired freaky people need not apply." The state unemployment office decided to deny benefits to long-haired men. Their reasoning was a survey of 900 employers found 81% of them would refuse to hire a man who was not trimmed at the neck and the ear and, therefore, such applicants were voluntarily limiting their ability to get new jobs. The state backed this local decision despite protests from attorneys that the decision violated first amendment rights. The Monterey unemployment office was more lenient toward free-spirited females however. As Time Magazine reported, “‘Only 3% of the employers surveyed want to hire girls who wear midi or micro-mini skirts either, but for the moment they are chivalrously being kept on the unemployment rolls."

Photo: unknown original source

The Peninsula’s Role in the United Nations

2009-03-05T02:07:00.001-08:00

Monterey may be an international language capital now with the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio and the Monterey Institute of International Studies turning out linguists who frequently work for the United Nations. But before those schools were established, the Peninsula was considered a possible headquarters location for U.N. That was back in the 1940s before the new world organization decided to settle in New York City. Samuel F. B. Morse offered 500 acres of land in Del Monte Forest “without restrictions” to the U.N. if the organization would like to build its headquarters here. “I did it myself because I didn’t think anybody else had the territory to offer,” Morse told The Herald in 1945. He discussed it with the U.S. Secretary of State while he was a guest in his home, Morse said, then supplied complete data on the Peninsula climate, geographic and scenic advantages. The Peninsula was one of about 20 locations considered before the U.N. in 1946 decided to settle in New York City.

Picture provided by Air Ninja

From Free to Prestigious

2009-03-05T01:51:00.000-08:00

Samuel Morse turned over 500 acres of Del Monte Forest for $1 to the Monterey Peninsula Country Club membership to build a new golf course. The magnificently-built Dunes course was opened on July 4, 1926, seven years after the Pebble Beach Golf Links. It look less than two years to build, as required by Morse. Membership was on an invitation-only basis and included a free home site! There were initially 500 lots bordering the course. According to a 2008 report by Forbes Magazine, initiation fees now run $175,000 (and definitely do not include a private lot!). The club was one of the three included in the Crosby tournament beginning its first year in Pebble Beach (1947) until it was replaced by Spyglass. When Gerald Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter, Ford spent his first day in private life playing at MPCC with Arnold Palmer and according to news reports, appeared quite contented despite his golf performance. According to the New York Times, Ford "gave his audience little to cheer about as he sliced, hooked and occasionally three-putted his way through 18 holes of golf" during the Crosby tournament that year. Although MPCC is private, the club is generous in allowing members to sponsor functions there for local organizations such as the Peninsula Dance Quadrille and the Pebble Beach Riding & Trail Association.

Commercialism-by-the-Sea

2009-02-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

The Carmel Pine Cone began warning against the danger of a chamber as early as 1928. A chamber of horrors? A torture chamber? No, a Chamber of Commerce! The Pine Cone called it the "trademark of Babbitry." Then in November of 1931, in the depths of the depression, the paper reported that 40 business people had the temerity to consider the formation of "an organization to expound the charms of the village to the world." The paper noted that "despite the fact that at least half of Carmel's stores are owned by women, only one, a writer at that, braved the dangers of attending the session." Mayor Herbert Heron called the chamber idea ridiculous and said that "the merchants are cutting their own throats." One resident warned that if the chamber were established, people would call the town "Commercialism-by-the-Sea". A week later the Los Angeles Times reported that it was not surprising that Sinclair Lewis was about to take residence in Carmel now that the "charming little city has voted down a proposal for the establishment there of a chamber of commerce." The paper noted that "artists and authors...pooh-poohed the idea of commercial exploitation and would have none of it." A Carmel Business Association had been formed three years earlier in 1928 but it was organized to improve the city, not to be a booster organization. In 2003 the Carmel Business Association was renamed the Carmel Chamber of Commerce, 75 years after the controversy started.

Carmel's Bell Tower

2009-01-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

The stone bell tower on the center median of Carmel's Ocean Avenue at San Carlos Street was designed and built in 1922 by Charles Greene, one of the legendary architects of the Arts & Crafts Movement in the early 20th century. He broke away from the celebrated Greene & Greene firm, which designed many of the homes still treasured in Pasadena, and moved to Carmel in 1916 in order to devote more time to his personal painting and writing. Greene did only a few structures here, most notably his brick studio near Lincoln and 13th; the castle-like "Seaward" mansion that seems to sprout from the ocean cliff across Highway 1 from the Highlands Inn; and the downtown bell tower, which is actually the Carmel War Memorial, a monument to Carmel's World War I veterans. Greene also designed and built his family home in Carmel, a U-shaped redwood bungalow on Lincoln that has since been demolished. Personal note: I am not related to any of these people.

Big Sur Laureate

2009-01-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

Henry Miller helped make Big Sur famous in the 1940s and '50s, turning out novels that challenged literary norms, plus thousands of watercolor paintings. Miller was well established before he found Big Sur in 1942, largely because of his Tropic of Cancer, which sold millions of copies even though it was banned 30 years for its graphic content. Miller wrote it in 1934 while living in Paris. He was 51 when he explored California's artist colonies, including Carmel, and decided to settle on the remote Partington Ridge in Big Sur. He explained later in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch: "It is my belief that the immature artist seldom thrives in idyllic surroundings. If an art colony is established here it will go the way of all the others. Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do." Ironically perhaps given the nature of some of his writing, Miller was so inspired by Big Sur that he invoked divinity to describe it: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the Earth as the Creator intended it to look."

(Photo: Partington Ridge in Bug Sur courtesy of ekai)

Carmel's Cold War

2009-01-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

A soft-spoken English immigrant cleaned up and maintained Carmel's Forest Theater a few years until the fall of 1950, when the City Council found out he was registered with the county Elections Department as a Communist. After some debate, Norman Duxbury was terminated from his non-paying city job, then kicked out of the Pacific Grove Gay Nineties Square Dance Club because other members didn't want to do-si-so with him anymore. So at age 67, Duxbury, a retired carpenter, took his Social Security and spent the rest of his years gardening at his Monterey home and writing copious letters to newspaper editors. Duxbury worked for Carmel for no outright compensation other than the right to live in a free shack on the grounds. He was not a member of the Communist Party (they rejected him too) and did not believe in violence. According to a Time Magazine article on the Carmel incident, Duxbury just believed the government "... will collapse from its own rottenness".

Ike Liked the Monterey Peninsula

2009-01-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

Locals liked President Dwight Eisenhower as much as he liked the Monterey Peninsula when he and his wife, Mamie, visited in the summer of 1956. He arrived after a 120 mile train trip from San Francisco to Monterey during which he spent an hour waving to well-wishers from the open back platform of the train. Arriving at Monterey at 10 PM on a late August evening, he was met with a cheering reception. His caravan then made the short drive to the Cypress Point Club. Ike came for three days of golf, caught "vacation fever" and stayed for two more. It was a happy break after he was nominated for a second term by a Republican convention in San Francisco. Ike and Mamie spent most of their time at the Cypress Club which only had 130 members (versus 250 today). His suite is still referred to as the Eisenhower room. While at Pebble Beach, the problems of the world would not go away. Ike would need to respond to a recent nuclear test by the USSR and monitor the growing Suez crisis. He also faced a very personal test: the infamous 16th hole at Cypress Point.

The president, despite recent surgery, played 18 holes of golf at the exclusive Cypress Pint Club five days in a row. He was clearly enchanted and commented to the press about drizzle from the fog and the thickness of a cypress tree that held onto a ball he hit into it. He joked that the sea lions always began barking went he commenced a drive. Ike let reporters know that if he tried for three years he wouldn't be able to get a ball across the 220-foot span of ocean on the infamous 16th hole, so he took extra strokes to keep his ball on land. The Eisenhowers rarely ventured away from Cypress Point, but found hundreds of well-wishers waiting in cars greeting them as they entered Carmel on a Sunday morning. They visited the Carmel Mission and Ike shook hands with all 36 nuns. They attended services at the newly-built Carmel Presbyterian Church where all 325 seats were taken and hundreds waited outside. A wall at the church included bricks from churches around the world, including the Eisenhowers' own church in DC.

(Image: Ike golfing in 1956 on the Monterey Peninsula from
Life Magazine)

Presidential Golf

2009-01-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama could be at least the sixth president to play golf on the Monterey Peninsula. Golf may be secondary to basketball in the president's personal schedule, but he has told reporters he'd like to play all the best golf courses in the country, including Pebble Beach. If that happens, he would be at least the fifth president to play Pebble. President Dwight Eisenhower was here in 1956 to play Cypress Point, of course, but it was the more famous – and public -- Pebble Beach Links that drew President George H.W. Bush, his son George W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton to the Peninsula tees. The senior Bush played at least one AT&T Pro-Am after he left the White House, and Ford played at least one of the AT&T's forerunners, The Crosby. George W. Bush played Pebble while he was president, though his presence a few years ago was hushed. And Bill Clinton played the course at least twice while president, twice since.

Image: Obama playing golf from Time Inc.

Historic Ruts

2009-01-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

The debates in today's Carmel may pale in comparison to one of the formative battles on whether to smooth Ocean Avenue all the way to the beach. It was in 1921 when the fabled artists in the colony fought to keep deep ruts in the street, dust piles that obscured them and huge pine roots as an effective way to discourage tourists. Developers and businesses owners in the two-block commercial district wanted smoother routes and fewer toll gates to attract customers. The entrenched conflict drew impressive coverage in the Los Angeles Times, which ran a lengthy story on the "protective" ruts versus "safe" roads. It began: "The idiosyncrasies of artists have not succeeded in establishing about Carmel-by-the-Sea a barrier so impenetrable as to exclude the 'idle rich.' But they have, to date, been successful in checkmating the influx of the 'tourist horde' by the simple expedient of thwarting any move made by the 'capitalists' of Carmel toward street improvement." The next year, however, the city decided to pave Ocean Avenue and bought the sand dunes at the foot of it.

(Photo: Ocean Avenue in Carmel courtesy of Ned Raggett)

His honor, the Village Smithy

2009-01-07T12:35:00.000-08:00

John Catlin was elected mayor of Carmel in 1932 on the condition that the office wouldn't interfere with his business as the village blacksmith. A former lawyer in San Francisco, Catlin gave up that career to move to Carmel and work as an artist and blacksmith. He opened his "Forge in the Forest" in 1923 at Junipero and 6th Avenue, where the Surf 'N Sand General Store is today. After Catlin was elected, any mayoring that was needed between council meetings had to be brought to his shop. The business name was moved a block away to 5th and Junipero Avenues in 1944, when another artist and blacksmith, Francis Whitaker, paid Hugh Comstock $1,200 to build a new "Forge in the Forest" there. Whitaker worked there as a blacksmith for the 13 years he was on the city council, then the building became an artist's studio and, in the 1970s, a restaurant and saloon.

Fishy Building in PG

2009-01-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

The concrete building at the ocean end of Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove was built by the Navy in 1952 with walls thick and strong enough to withstand a direct bomb attack. It was part of Cold War preparations, then abandoned after a few decades. A federal research group that had been operating out of trailers at the Navy's Fleet Numerical Center in Monterey moved to the oceanfront building in the 1990s, bringing equipment that helps analyze changing conditions in the Pacific and the subsequent effects on fisheries. The work of the Environmental Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center has provided some of the crucial evidence of global warming, or climate change. The scientists recently adorned their squat building next to the Point Pinos Lighthouse with a 400-foot mural that wraps around the outer walls and displays the colorful critters that flourish in Monterey Bay.

(Photo: Environmental Research Division building in PG from
their web site)

The Other Half of Point Lobos

2009-01-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

Landscape painter Francis McComas called Point Lobos "the greatest meeting of land and water in the world" a century ago, a claim frequently stolen but rarely disputed. Point Lobos is also half of a whole, with a mirror image 100 miles north. Point Reyes, a scenic formation north of San Francisco, is believed by geologists to have been attached to Point Lobos a few million years ago, broken off and moved north by the Palo Colorado-San Gregorio Fault Zone. The eastern shoreline of Point Reyes fits like a puzzle with the jagged, western shoreline of Point Lobos, both in geological analysis and aerial photos. They have identical layers of rocks and sediments, a unique pattern found nowhere else, according to H. Gary Greene, a renowned researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, Moss Landing Marine Lab and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The geology shows the two points were formed together by volcanoes, glaciers, floods and ocean floor lifts.

(Photo: Point Reyes courtesy of Patrick Smith)

Carmel's Bohemian Error

2009-01-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Carmel City Council in 2004 refused money from the sale of a risqué calendar intended to help pay for firehouse repairs. But in 1931, during Carmel's Bohemian period, poet-Mayor Herbert Heron and several of his councilmen had no objection when the Society of Sun requested permission to have a nudist colony at the old Carmel hospital site. The head of the twelve person sun-worshipping and lust-scorning Society, explained to the Council that she was fearful of peeping Toms. She planned to locate in a wooded section surrounded by an 8 foot wall. City attorney, Argylle Campbell, dissented and feared "Carmel would become the laughing stock of the nation" if the Society was welcomed to town. Both fears were realized. An entrepreneur quickly set up sightseeing flights over the hospital for gawkers who had heard the news. The police deputized two citizens to control the crowds and the Society was forced to swiftly leave town after a few days to escape a horde of peeping Toms. And six months later the New York Times described Carmel as a "haven of art, literature, liberalism and nudists."

(Photo: Herbert Heron playing Hamlet at the Forest Theater in 1926 from the Harrison Memorial Library Local History Room as found in the Carmel Residents Association Newsletter.)

Carmel-by-any-Name

2009-01-07T12:22:00.001-08:00

Carmel has been portrayed many ways since it bloomed as an "artist colony" in the early 1900s. In the 1920s as the town was becoming more affluent and more of a vacation resort, one columnist described its residents as "tweedy old bags in baggy old tweeds." Pressure to commercialize in the 1930s prompted resident Sinclair Lewis to warn: "Don't let the Babbitts take over Carmel." In 1950, Time magazine described the city as "a little world of its own on California's Monterey Peninsula where artists, the indolent wealthy and year-round vacationers rub elbows." Political leanings, both liberal and conservative, have been mocked. Time in 1932 called Carmel the "Provincetown of the Pacific Coast" for allowing the wedding of a black and a white couple. Then in the 1960s there was criticism for trying to keep hippies from sitting in the parks. In the 1980s, a struggle between quaintness and commercialism lead the Los Angeles Times to call Carmel "Scrooge City." Perhaps jealousy is a factor behind some of the comments. Ten years ago, the New York Times wrote: "Carmel-by-the-Sea is like the prom queen who classmates secretly hope will spill punch on her gown. Poised, pretty and pampered, the town prompts snide remarks from otherwise boosterish California guidebooks."

The Great White Fleet

2009-01-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

The largest crowd to date packed onto the Monterey Peninsula in 1908 to welcome the "Great White Fleet," an armada of 16 monstrous battleships President Theodore Roosevelt sent around the world to show the U.S. had become a naval power. The steamships were painted white and lighted at nights, creating a fairyland presence that excited every port of call. Residents of Big Sur burned an entire chord of wood in a large bonfire that saluted the ships as they passed one April night, sailing from Santa Barbara to Monterey. Thousands lined the beaches of Carmel and Monterey at daybreak to watch the floating parade. Monterey was cleaned, whitewashed and decked in bunting and American flags to welcome the sailors. The first day the ships were opened to visitors, 10,000 ferried out to the mobile fortresses to see the massive armor and heavy guns. The battleships stayed for four days, then sailed on to Santa Cruz, San Francisco and the rest of the Pacific.

Image: "U.S. Atlantic Fleet Battleships, steaming out of Hampton Roads, VA. , in December 1907, to begin their cruise around the World. Leading two ships are: Kansas (BB-21) and Vermont (BB-22). NH 92091" from the Navy Department Library)

Cross Words

2008-12-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

The Carmel Pine Cone does not mind being provocative. But on a July 4th weekend in 1992 it really got readers upset not for what was in the paper, but what wasn't. The New York Times crossword puzzle was accidentally left out and readers were indignant. "The switchboard operator had close to 100 calls before she had time to say, 'My God, where's the puzzle?'" recalled Ray March, the Pine Cone editor at the time. March and the staff talked it through and decided to trust the sophistication and humor of the readership. The missing puzzle became the front page of the next edition, with an apology in very large type. March also published an editorial for his staff stating, "We forget at times that The Carmel Pine Cone is many things to many people: that it's not just the latest 'scoop' or late-breaking story that our readers are looking for…." The event was reported in the New York Times and turned into a promotional tool by the syndicate that distributed the puzzles.

Point Sur Lighthouse

2008-12-02T02:29:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Point Sur Lighthouse courtesy of slworking2, Creative Commons license.)

Point Sur was especially hazardous for sea travelers during the 100-year period from the mid-1800s, when marine traffic increased dramatically, to after World War II, when radar became common. Brave sailors died in shipwrecks, but ironically, some Central Coast residents profited, rushing to beaches to scoop up lumber and other goods that washed ashore. The good ship Ventura foundered off the coast in 1875. This accident gave impetus to construction of the Point Sur Light Station, which opened in 1889. Even after the lighthouse began operation, shipwrecks happened - partly because vessels plied perilously close to the rocky shores to avoid headwinds. The light station is open for tours; moonlight tours are powerfully evocative. Call 831-625-4419 for details.

(Video: A tour and background of the Point Sur Historic Lighthouse)

Point Pinos Lighthouse

2008-12-02T02:06:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Point Pinos Lighthouse, courtesy of Hugh Mason who released it in to the public domain.)

Lighthouses, the picturesque beacons built to warn mariners of hazards along the rugged coastline, starting popping up on California's shore in the 1850s to help guide ships hauling goods to San Francisco, the mercantile center of the Gold Rush. They also guided ships picking up whale oil in Monterey, cowhides and timber in Big Sur. The first of the lighthouses was built on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in 1854, the second at Point Pinos in Pacific Grove in 1855, and eventually there were more than two dozen. Although technology has generally replaced their need, a dozen lighthouses still operate along the California coast. The Alcatraz light was replaced by a prison expansion in 1909, providing the Point Pinos Lighthouse the honor of being the oldest continually operating lighthouse on the West Coast. It is now owned by the city and operated remotely by the Coast Guard.

Monterey Aquarium

2008-12-01T23:52:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Monterey Aquarium, courtesy of Ed Bierman, Creative Commons License.)

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has been acclaimed as one of the finest in the world, while also becoming a leader in ocean conservation. The popular aquarium sparked a tourism boom for the Monterey Peninsula when it opened in 1984, and has attracted approximately 2 million visitors every year since. There are five times as many hotel rooms on the peninsula now as there were in 1984, and tourist spending has tripled to about $2 billion a year. However, few people know that the aquarium was originally conceived by four diving buddies while drinking margaritas after a day in Monterey Bay. One of them was a daughter of computer giant David Packard. When she told her father the idea of converting a former sardine cannery into an aquarium to display the marine life of Monterey Bay, he liked it so much he decided to pay for the construction.

(Video: Sunfish and Great White Shark at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. White sharks are generally released by the aquarium after a few months.)

The Winstons of Pacific Grove

2008-12-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Holly's Cafe courtesy of Big Bear, little penguin.)

The Winston family of Pacific Grove may be best remembered locally for the namesake hotel built at Lighthouse and 16th in 1904 (the building now anchored by Holly's Lighthouse Cafe). But in the 1890s, Will E. Winston was a grocer who bought a young sea lion from a local fisherman and discovered it could be coaxed to perform for fish. Winston obtained other California sea lions, trained them at his home on Lighthouse Avenue, and soon joined the Barnum & Bailey Circus with what they misnamed a trained "seals" act. It was a unique show, the first of its kind, and a hit with audiences throughout the US and Europe as the sea lions barked, bounced beach balls off their noses, clapped their flippers and even danced on stage in exchange for fish treats. Will eventually turned the business over to a son, H.W. Winston, who started training sea lions in a storefront on Forest Avenue in about 1915.

Images Sought

2008-12-01T03:27:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Ansel Adams along the cliffs of Big Sur, originally published on March 28, 1980 by the Los Angeles Times. This cropped, smaller image is considered a fair use. Original photo © Los Angeles Times.)

Ansel Adams, possibly the best known photographer in the world, died in Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in 1984 at the age of 82. But his unique photos still sell well as prints, posters, books, calendars and cards. One of the more than 30,000 prints Adams made himself sold for $609,000 during a 2006 auction in New York. And just three months ago, a new visitors’ center at a national park in New Mexico opened with a roomful of photos Adams took there in the 1940s. Born and raised in San Francisco in 1902, Adams was a concert pianist until he was 28, when he decided to devote himself to his photography. He went into it with zeal and lived for years in Yosemite, then moved to Carmel in 1962. Adams had to support his art and his family with commercial photography, portraits, teaching and editing for 40 years until the 1970s, when he was able to make a living solely from his famous images.

(Video: Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius)

Steinbeck Turnaround

2008-12-01T02:59:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Main entrance of the Steinbeck Center in Salinas by beastandbean, all rights reserved.)

It’s been 40 years since novelist John Steinbeck died (Dec. 20, 1968) and 25 since he was fully recognized as a valuable part of Salinas’ history. For the latter half of Steinbeck’s life, he was persona non grata in his hometown, where his 1930s books were burned and banned, particularly for depictions of rich growers exploiting desperate workers during the Depression. After “The Grapes of Wrath” was published in 1939, Steinbeck was denounced by some as subversive. That anger lasted for years. “They want no part of me except in a pine box,” Steinbeck wrote in a letter in 1953. He was living in New York in 1962 when he won the Nobel Prize for literature, and didn’t return to Salinas until his ashes were ready for burial in the family plot. Sentiment changed by 1983, when a group of civic leaders and agribusinesses organized to raise millions to build the National Steinbeck Center. It opened in 1998 in tribute to the words of the now-favorite son.

Passing Giants

2008-12-01T02:31:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Grey whale tail by corradodebari, all rights reserved.)

The start of each year is about time for the peak of the gray whale migration to pass along our coastline, as the giant mammals head south for the breeding areas in Mexican lagoons. They are so bunched up in mid to late January, passing at rates up to 20 an hour, it’s usually easy to see them from the higher points – Cypress Point, Carmel Point, Point Lobos or any of the Highway 1 turnouts through Big Sur. The 35-ton whales will tend to reproduction matters, then head back to the Arctic to feed until it’s time to repeat the 12,000-mile migration next year. They are more scattered and spread out on the northern return, usually passing here in March, April and May. There are 18,000 to 20,000 gray whales today, after a slow recovery from the 19th century when whalers hunted them to near extinction. Some whales show stress and malnourishment as global warming changes habitats and food supply, but most grays seem to be adapting, according to marine biologists who study them.

(Below is a video of a whale watching trip in Monterey Bay, courtesy of absmin, all rights reserved.)

Lucky Lindy

2008-12-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Charles Lindbergh flying his glider over the Tehachapi Mountains in 1930 by smithvester, all rights reserved.)

Aviator Charles Lindbergh – "Lucky Lindy" - spent a few weeks on the Monterey Peninsula in March 1930, three years after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. He was here to experiment with a motor-less glider, and tried to launch it almost daily from a hill south of Carmel Highlands. The world was watching, but the usual Pacific winds didn't materialize. The first day's flight could last only a few minutes. The longest – an hour and 10 minutes, according to a New York Times report – ended with an emergency landing after an aileron control fell off a wing. Lindbergh kept trying, but without enough wind sometimes had to land on the nearby roadway, the weekly newspaper High Tide reported. According to that local paper, Lindy and his new wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, stayed at the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach, and the famous aviator played a lot of polo while waiting for winds. He fell off his pony on one occasion.

Counting Trees

2008-12-01T01:48:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Tree on Carmel Beach courtesy of Dublin Patty,all rights reserved.)

The New York Times once published a profile of Carmel that said it may be the only community in America that numbers its trees but not its houses. Quirky, perhaps, but it was a drive to protect the trees that led the colorful Bohemians of the artists' colony in 1916 to incorporate the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea. They wanted to make a law to keep people from cutting trees. The actual numbering of the trees hasn't been undertaken for decades, and houses in the original village have remained unnumbered. When state legislators proposed a law in 1953 that would have required all houses in California to be numbered, Carmel threatened to secede from the state. More recently, the US Postal Service told residents they would have to use building numbers to get door-to-door delivery. As a result, the city now pays a private messenger to carry mail to those who want home delivery – about 5 percent of the populace.

Presidio of Monterey

2008-12-01T01:27:00.001-08:00

(Image: the original Presido of Monterey in 1793 from The California State Military Museum).

The Presidio of Monterey and its Defense Language Institute could be ranked as the fourth largest city on the Monterey Peninsula, with 7,500 military students, civilian instructors, and support staff on the Monterey base at peak class times. It has been the major source of military language training since 1974 and now teaches 24languages in courses that last 27 to 64 weeks. Arabic languages dominate the program today as Japanese and then Russian once did. The DLI has 2,000 graduates each year in all branches of the military, and produces pocket-size booklets in more than 50 languages as "survival guides" for all troops sent to foreign countries. The DLI has 1,500 instructors who also contribute to the cultural diversity and international tone of the Peninsula. The Presidio has on-base housing for 1,600 military families, and the school and its base have a budget of about $200 million each year.

The Presidio of Monterey was established by the Spaniards who, when they landed in 1770, claimed the West Coast for Spain. The first presidio, which means "fort" in Spanish, was near El Estero. It moved to its present hill location in 1792; fell into disrepair after the Mexicans booted the Spanish in 1822; was restored after Navy Commodore John Sloat claimed the West for the US in 1846; and was transferred to the Army in 1847, when an artillery regiment with a lieutenant named Edward O.C. Ord arrived. The Monterey base had several names before it was abandoned again in 1856. It wasn't used much until an infantry regiment returned from China and the Philippines to rebuild it in 1902. A unit of the all-black "Buffalo Soldiers" cavalry soon joined them and, in 1904, the original name Presidio of Monterey was restored. The Army Language School moved here in 1946, and in 1974 all US military language instruction was consolidated in Monterey.

(Video below: Description of the Defense Language Institute)

The First Village

2008-12-01T01:04:00.001-08:00

(Photo: Where Esselen Indians prepared acorn meal in Big Sur courtesy of surharper), all rights reserved.)

Detailed recording of Monterey Peninsula history started in 1770 when Spanish missionaries landed and brought a written language. But there were people living here for at least 5,000 years before that. They were collectively called Coastanoans (coast people) by the Spanish, but they called themselves Esselen, Rumsen, Salinan and Ahma Mutsun, different groups and cultures with different origins. Archaeologists have found at least 30 of the early Indian settlements on the Peninsula and have carbon dated the rock tools, sea shells, trash and bones left behind. The most recent find uncovered the oldest known residential site in the area – near Lovers Point in Pacific Grove. Archaeological Consulting of Salinas found Esselen lived there about 5,300 years ago. DNA testing reported in 2006 found those earliest known inhabitants lived on diets of mostly sea otters and seals, with some shellfish and fish and very few plants, seeds or nuts.

Munras

2008-12-01T00:44:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Casa Munras Hotel of Monterey; permission sought)

Munras Avenue is one of the best-marked streets in Monterey, Casa Munras one of the oldest hotels. Their namesake is Don Esteban Munras, a Barcelona-born artist who was sent to Monterey as a Spanish diplomat in 1820, just a year before Mexico won its independence from Spain and took control of Alta California. Munras stayed, and built the first house outside the presidio walls – Casa Munras - in 1824. He established a ranch in Monterey, trading cowhides and tallow to ship captains who brought fine furnishings from the East Coast, which Munras then sold in a store next to his family home. Some of the furnishings became family heirlooms and are now displayed in a Munras museum at the Carmel Mission. His most colorful remembrance may be the well-preserved frescoes in the chapel at Mission San Miguel, which Salinan Indians painted under his direction.

The Architect of Big Sur

2008-12-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Nathaniel Owings on the cover of Time Magazine, August 2, 1968, considered fair use).

The late Nathaniel Owings was a world-renowned architect who helped build the first skyscrapers before he helped preserve Big Sur. Owings and his wife Margaret built a modest home on the coast in the 1950s. They joined with agitated neighbors in the 1960s when Caltrans planned to accommodate tourism by widening Highway 1 and filling in the many canyons for continuous pavement. "Beauty is almost a bad word with some highway engineers," Owings said. "They're very competent. But you would not ask your butcher to perform plastic surgery on your best girl." So he had experts in his giant firm – Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill – design concrete bridges that would be cheaper and more beautiful than clogged canyons. Then Owings helped write an overall land use plan to limit development in Big Sur in order to protect the scenic views, watershed and wildlife - a plan that essentially still governs man's intrusion into that natural wonderland.

The First Mission

2008-11-24T00:07:00.001-08:00

(Photo: The Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo of Monterey in 1934, photographed by Roger Sturtevant as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey, considered in the public domain).

The graceful Carmel Mission is certainly the better known Spanish mission on the Monterey Peninsula, but it wasn't the first. Father Junipero Serra, along with the priests and soldiers he brought with him, and the California natives they enlisted, built a mission in Monterey shortly after landing on June 3, 1770. The priests moved the mission to the Carmel River three miles away by the end of 1771. Historians say there were two reasons for the move: The riverside was more fertile for crops, and the priests were having trouble separating the Spanish soldiers from the Indian women. The original buildings in Monterey were destroyed in 1789, when misguided canons set them ablaze. The replacement church was finished in 1794 – the Royal Presidio Chapel, a sandstone and adobe structure that stands today as the San Carlos Cathedral.

Sunset Center

2008-11-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

( Photo: Sunset Center in 2007 by Bob Aronson, Creative Commons License.)

The Sunset Center has been a cultural web in Carmel for more than four decades, hosting world-renown entertainers ranging from celebrated violinists to dazzling circus acts. The former schoolhouse took on that role in 1964, when city voters decided to buy the centrally located property and convert it to an arts center. It cost $575,000 at the time, which took the city 25 years to pay off. The auditorium built with the school in 1931 became the theater. While it may have been fine for 7- and 8-year-olds at school assemblies, adult concert goers complained of acoustics when listening to the likes of Itzhak Perlman. Seating also became an issue, ventilation, and the conditions of the lobby and restrooms. More than 1,000 people contributed to a $21 million renovation fund and after two years of work, the 700-seat theater we treasure today opened in 2003 with modern comforts and remarkable acoustics.

(Video below: Keyboard Spectacular at the Carmel Bach Festival, Sunset Center)

Border Wars

2008-11-23T08:14:00.001-08:00

(Photo: Carmel Gate in 2003, courtesy of Bill and Barbara Windsor, RoundAmerica).

What a difference a little time can make. It was back in 1985 when Carmel officials were talking about closing the Pebble Beach gate. Some worried that new golf courses – Poppy Hills was opening in 1986, Spanish Bay in 1987 – would draw more traffic through Carmel, so they talked about barricading the gate at Carmel Way and 17 Mile Drive to preserve the residential character of the city. "Sure it's drastic, but so is war," said one City Council member. "People didn't come to Carmel to live on a main artery," said another. This is, after all, a city that once debated building a fence around its borders, and once threatened to secede from California. The 1985 border war disappeared the next year after Clint Eastwood was elected mayor and traffic flooded into Carmel by every route available.

A couple of years later Pebble Beach faced another border dispute. Pebble Beach's neighbors on the north and east – Pacific Grove and Monterey – organized a war of protests and lawsuits against the Pebble Beach Co. in 1989 when it cut down 900 trees in a single day. The company was clearing the forest for its 5th gate, off Holman Highway to Congress Road, which had been approved five years earlier as part of the Spanish Bay development. But Pacific Grove had changed its mind since then – and its city councils – and was negotiating with Pebble Beach when the bulldozers and chain saws showed up. The reaction was so bitter that then-Mayor Morris Fisher urged Pagrovians to constrain themselves. "My God, they're our neighbors," he said. "They buy our groceries. They shop in our stores. They make deposits in our banks. They provide jobs for people in our community. They're not somebody from the evil empire." The county and the courts upheld the gate construction, but protests went on for months.

Father Serra

2008-11-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

(Image: Father Serra at age 61, several years before his death. Author unknown. Public domain).

Sainthood was proposed for Father Junipero Serra 60 years ago by the Catholic Diocese of Monterey-Fresno. The laborious process has moved slowly since. In 1985, the Vatican recognized Serra as worthy for establishing the Spanish missions in California during the 18th century. In 1986, Pope John Paul II declared the priest venerable, and was expected to beatify him in September 1987 while visiting Serra's grave at the Carmel Mission. But Indian protests erupted. Some historians and Catholics see Serra as a hero who brought Christianity to save the souls of thousands of California Indians, while other historians and Indian descendants see him as a brutal force of cultural genocide. Most Indians died young from various diseases brought by the Spanish, and some were treated as captives and slaves. A year after his Carmel visit, the pope did beatify Serra and move him one step from sainthood, but the controversy simmers on.

Monterey Bay's Oil Industry

2008-11-23T07:35:00.001-08:00

(Photo: Old Whaling Station in Monterey in 2007 by beautifulcataya under a Creative Commons license.)

It wouldn't be acceptable as an alternative fuel today, but before oil was pumped from the ground, whale oil kept the lights of America burning, and provided jobs in Monterey. It was in the 1850s, after California became the 31st state of the United States and most of the workforce had scrambled to the gold fields in the Sierra Nevada. Immigrant whalers moved to Monterey to pursue their livelihood. One company took over an adobe house near Fisherman's Wharf for onshore operations, a place ever since known as The Old Whaling Station, now managed by the Junior League of Monterey County. The Monterey whalers killed 20 to 25 humpback and gray whales each year, boiled the oil out of their blubber, and shipped 800 to 1,000 barrels of whale oil to markets that paid up to $72 a barrel for the fuel. The market fell after 1880, when oil wells provided cheaper kerosene for lamps and lanterns. Whale oil dropped to about $8 a barrel by the end of the 19th century, and whaling stopped in Monterey.

Esalen Institute

2008-11-22T15:18:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Hot springs at Esalen Institute in 2006 by boltron, Creative Commons License.)

The greatest accomplishment of the Esalen Institute, founded in Big Sur in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Dick Price, is the incubation of a powerful psychological school of thought, the human potential movement. It proposes a positive, "self-actualized" future for humanity (a contrast to the Freudian and Skinnerian notions that long dominated mainstream psychological thinking). The phrase "human potential movement" was coined at Esalen in 1965 by Murphy and author George Leonard, based on the phrase "civil rights movement" and Aldous Huxley's "human potentialities." For almost 50 years now, Esalen has been a world-renowned gathering point for scholars and students. Many people who got their start there, or passed through, have written important books, including Murphy's encyclopedic "The Future of the Body." "Esalen has had a profound effect on American culture," says Jeffrey J. Kripal, an author and noted scholar of religion.

(Video: Esalen photo essay by Alyce Faye Cleese)

Walter Colton

2008-11-22T11:15:00.000-08:00

(Image: Engraving of Walter Colton (1797-1851. Image is inscribed, "Very sincerely yours, Walter Colton". Original source. Author unknown. Considered in the public domain)

Rev. Walter Colton, the first American government official in California and a Yale-education chaplain, was aboard one of the Navy warships that visited Monterey after Commodore John Sloat seized the West from Mexico in 1846. Colton was appointed alcalde, or chief magistrate, of everything within 300 miles of Monterey.

Colton Hall

2008-11-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Colton Hall, taken in 2005, courtesy of Jaybeatle under a GNU Free Documentation License.)

Walter Colton started shaping this side of the US by selling lots for private ownership, empanelling the first jury, fining gamblers, and taxing liquor sales. That income, and convict labor, paid for the first American structure in California, the two-story Colton Hall that is still part of Monterey's City Hall complex. It was finished in 1847, with schoolrooms on the ground floor and an open room upstairs for public assemblies. The assembly room was crucial in 1849, when the 48 founders (40 who spoke English, 8 who spoke Spanish) wrote the bilingual California Constitution inside it.

(Video: Colton Hall overview.)

Baez in Carmel

2008-11-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

(Image: This photograph of Joan Baez and friends was taken in the year Baez founded the “Institute For The Study Of Nonviolence” in Carmel Valley. For further information regarding the photo see the original source.) Seeking permission from the owner.)

Joan Baez was a hero of folk music when she moved from Massachusetts to Carmel Highlands in the summer of 1961. She built a house in Carmel Valley three years later and soon tried to start an Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in her home. County planners said zoning wouldn't permit a school in a residence, so she bought a former schoolhouse in a remote area 10 miles away, in the oak-studded hills of the upper valley. The old school had closed in 1950. The whitewashed, adobe building had been a poison oak lab and a shotgun shell plant since. Baez's plan inflamed a couple who lived nearby and they made a fuss about "the lunatic fringe" moving into Carmel Valley and Berkeley-type demonstrations forcing the valley's $40,000 - $50,000 property values to plummet. Their claim that the school would violate zoning prohibiting land use "detrimental to the peace, morality, or general welfare of Monterey County" prompted the county Board of Supervisors to convene a hearing.

For more than five hours in December 1965, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors heard objectors and supporters for a nonviolence school folk singer Joan Baez planned on her property Carmel Valley. Some said bearded peace demonstrators in the valley would destroy property values, while others claimed the county was turning into Nazi Germany. When it was Baez's turn to speak, she said that as an investor in Carmel Valley, she was also concerned about property values. The board permitted the school on a narrow 3-2 vote. An angry neighbor later filed suit in Superior Court, and lost. When the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence opened, 15 students at a time paid $20 a week to sit on the floor and discuss Ghandi, McLuhan and Thoreau. On breaks, they practiced ballet to Beatles records. And for an extra 50 cents a day, they lunched on grilled hot dogs, potato salad and Kool-aid. The students also put a lot of time into responding to one another "with beauty and tenderness."

Weddings in early California

2008-11-22T00:14:00.000-08:00

Limousines, altars, and banquet halls may be common in today's weddings. While purposes were the same, the trappings were quite different 160 years ago, when California was in the process of becoming the 31st state. A dispatch from Monterey to a Philadelphia newspaper in 1846 explained that horses were as important in weddings here as they were in everyday life. The groom rode to the wedding on the best horse he could find, using a saddle with bright embroidery and a bridle covered by silver. The bride rode on a horse with a leather skirt draped over its rump, a skirt covered with bright embroidery, and pieces of metal that jingled as she rode to her wedding. After the ceremony, the couple rode away on the same horse to the home of the bride's parents for a three-day reception filled with music, dancing, and drinking.

Jo Mora of Pebble Beach

2008-11-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Sacophagus of Father Serra sculpted by Jo Mora and unveiled in 1924 at the Carmel mission. Photo by J.D. Warrick. used under a Creative Commons by-nc-nd/2.0 license with approval of the photographer.)

Jo Mora's art can be seen in many places here, from his marble sculpture of Father Serra's body lying in state at the Carmel Mission to the 23 plaster and concrete heads of historic figures that rim the Monterey County Courthouse in Salinas. You don't have to wander far – maybe the Mora collection at the Monterey Museum of Art or the Harrison Memorial Library in Carmel – to learn that he was a versatile and prolific artist prized for his illustrated books, colorful posters, oil paintings, watercolors, and photographs, as well as his sculptures. His fanciful maps of Pebble Beach and Carmel, which sold for 50 cents in the 1930s, can today bring more than $1,000. Mora's legacy includes a collection in the Smithsonian. Born in Uruguay, he moved to the West in the early 20th century and ended up in Pebble Beach, where he spent 25 productive years before dying in 1947 at the age of 70.

John Steinbeck's Homes (part 1)

2008-11-21T21:57:00.000-08:00

(Photo: John Steinbeck's birthplace in Salinas. Courtesy of the owner.)

John Steinbeck is the only Nobel laureate born and raised in Monterey County – to date, anyway. He was born on Feb. 27, 1902, in the gracious Victorian in Salinas that is now a shrine, owned by a nonprofit group that operates a restaurant and gift shop in the house. That was the Steinbecks' principal residence, with summers and holidays at a Pacific Grove cottage they built when John was an infant. John and his first wife, Carol, took over the cottage as their home during the Depression. They lived there from 1930 to 1936 while John wrote six of his first novels, supported by a $25-a-month allowance from his father, the county treasurer. John's first critically acclaimed work, "Tortilla Flat," was published in 1935; the subsequent celebrity helped their departure. John and Carol moved to Los Gatos in 1936.

John Steinbeck's Homes (part 2)

2008-11-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

After John Steinbeck published his masterpiece "Grapes of Wrath" and won a Pulitzer Prize for literature, he and his wife Carol moved back to Pacific Grove in 1941. They separated soon afterwards and John moved to New York City. He married again, separated again, and moved back to the Steinbeck cottage at 147 11th Street in 1948. John met and married his third wife, Elaine, in Carmel in 1949 and they moved to New York. He turned the family cottage over to his sister, Beth Ainsworth, in the 1950s, returning for only brief visits before his death in 1968. A silver box containing his ashes arrived at the cottage on Christmas Eve that year and sat in the garden for two days before the memorial service at Point Lobos, then burial in a family plot in Salinas. After Mrs. Ainsworth died in 1992, the family kept the cottage and still uses it as a private home.

(Photo: John Steinbeck's cottage in Pacific Grove. Courtesy of the owner.)

A BIG crowd

2008-11-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

(Image: Officers of the Commodore John D. Sloat hoisting the American flag on July 7, 1846 in Monterey, California. Illustration circa 1855 by Anonymous, considered in the public domain.)
Golf tournaments, car shows, and rock concerts draw big crowds on the Monterey Peninsula these days, but the record seems to have been set in 1946, when as many as 150,000 people gathered for a patriotic parade through New Monterey and downtown. It was part of the Monterey Centennial, which was really a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the western expansion of the United States. Navy Commodore John Sloat landed 225 marines and sailors in the 150-home village of Monterey on July 7, 1846, and seized a 600,000-square-mile section of Mexico for the U.S. The area was called Alta California. Now we call it California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The U.S. takeover didn't require a single shot because Mexico's troops had already withdrawn from Monterey, the territorial capital, giving up what they considered a lost cause.

Streets of Gold

2008-11-21T17:51:00.001-08:00

(Image: Monterey Centennial Poster, California State Archives, Sacramento, California, considered in the public domain.)

The 1946 centennial of the U.S. seizure of California and the West from Mexico was a four-day celebration on the Monterey Peninsula, starting with the first Fourth of July parade since World War II ended. Alvarado Street was painted gold that day and the boisterous parade of troops, bands, drill teams, and dignitaries attracted 100,000 tourists and prompted the Herald to compare the festivities to Times Square on New Year's Eve. It was the largest crowd ever assembled in Monterey. But that was Thursday. On Saturday another parade – three miles long with Gov. Earl Warren at the front - drew as many as 150,000 spectators. It was followed by concerts, dances, and parties that extended through the night into Sunday morning - July 7, 1946 – when an American flag-raising ceremony in front of the Custom House recreated the scene that first took place there 100 years earlier.

Clint Eastwood and Misson Ranch

2008-11-21T15:38:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Mission Ranch in 2008 courtesy of Conan C. Cotrell.)

Clint Eastwood saved the popular Mission Ranch from demolition in 1986, the same year he was elected mayor of Carmel, by buying the rustic structures and surrounding acreage to keep them from being replaced by a planned condo complex. The property was once part of the Carmel Mission, overseen by Father Junipero Serra and the Spanish priests after they moved from Monterey in 1771. Mexico gained independence from Spain and closed the missions in 1834, selling the lands around them to settlers moving into California. This scenic setting along the Carmel River passed through several owners before John Martin bought it in the 1850s, put cows in the pastures, and started a dairy business. The dairy was replaced in 1937 by a private tennis/swim club, which became an officers' club in World War II, and eventually a public bar/restaurant/resort and the most enduring nightspot in the area.

Rosie's Cracker Barrel

2008-11-21T14:36:00.001-08:00

(Photo: Rosie's Cracker Barrel Restaurant in 2008 by Laura Vague.)

Rosie's Cracker Barrel hasn't really been Rosie's for 25 years, since William "Rosie" Henry died and his popular grocery/drug store/post office/bar drifted into a plumbing shop and then a vacant building. But it's still there, with Rosie's sign still on it, awaiting a new life. The landmark building at the foot of the Carmel River bridge at 1 Esquiline Road was the first commercial structure in Carmel Valley Villlage. It was built in 1927 as the real estate office for Robles Del Rio, the first subdivision in the valley. Rosie bought the structure in 1939, sold crackers out of the barrel, beans out of sacks, posted neighbors' mail between the shoestrings and pocket knives, stocked comics for kids, and ran a 6-stool bar in a back room for their parents. It was the civic center of the village for decades, and in 1993 the county added Rosie's to its registry of historic landmarks.

Pebble Beach Race Course

2008-11-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

(Photo: 1956 Pebble Beach car race. Photo taken by Don Meacham.) Meacham's photos were taken over by Ron Yates who is deceased. The ownership and whereabouts of the Meacham collection are unknown.)

Before there was a raceway at Laguna Seca, there was road racing through Pebble Beach – sports cars averaging more than 60 mph on a 2.2-mile circuit with sharp turns on parts of Portola Drive, Drake Road, and Stevenson Drive. The Sports Car Club of America started the races in November 1950, charging $1 admission and attracting 10,000 spectators. Phillip Hill Jr. of Santa Monica won that first Pebble Beach Cup in a Jaguar, then went on to win many racing prizes, including the world Grand Prix championship in 1961. There were only seven Pebble Beach Cup races before they ended in 1956, after Ernie McAfee of Los Angeles died on impact when he smashed his Ferrari into a tree on Stevenson Drive, just short of a cluster of hundreds of race fans. The off-road track at Laguna Seca was built the following year.

(Video: Racing a Porsche at Laguna Seca)

Asilomar

2008-11-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Asilomar Conference Center courtesy of Veronica Vale.)

The Asilomar Conference Center's 300 guest rooms make it one of the largest hotels on the Monterey Peninsula. The rustic resort in Pacific Grove also has 107 ocean-side acres of public beaches, restored sand dunes and peaceful pine groves to accompany the rooms, meeting facilities and dining hall. Asilomar opened 95 years ago with a few structures and 300 tents for a conference quickly organized by the Young Women's Christian Association. The YWCA expanded, then closed the facility in 1933 because of Depression economics. It was leased out as a motel in the late 1930s, used to house military families in the 1940s, and re-opened as a conference center in 1947. The State Department of Parks and Recreation bought the property in 1952 to stave off a glass company that wanted the sand in the dunes. The legislation to add Asilomar to the state park system was written by State Senator Fred Farr. When Fred died in 1997, his son, Congressman Sam Farr, turned down the tribute of adding his father's name to the facility.

Clint Eastwood at Ford Ord

2008-11-21T01:20:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Eastwood in the Army. Photo found in the collection of Darren Allison, ownership not determined.)

Clint Eastwood was a young GI stationed at Fort Ord in 1951 when he explored Carmel, Pebble Beach, Monterey, and Salinas on his $75-a-month salary. He said in later interviews the he didn't plan to own much in those days, but after studying business administration and acting in Los Angeles, and working at a series of menial jobs, Clint played the "Rawhide" TV series in 1959 as young wrangler Rowdy Yates. With that acting money, he bought a weekend retreat in Pebble Beach, "a tiny house" across from the Monterey Peninsula Country Club, for $20,000. A stream of hit movies followed and Clint surpassed John Wayne as the biggest box office draw in Hollywood history. He bought bigger houses in Pebble Beach and Carmel, the Mission Ranch and other notable properties in Carmel, Carmel Valley, Carmel Highlands and Pebble Beach. He is now one of the principal owners of the Pebble Beach Company, its posh hotels and world-famous golf courses.

California Condors

2008-11-21T01:05:00.000-08:00

(Photo: A California Condor in Big Sur that was part of a flock of ten birds. Photo used with permission of Brenner Photography.)

California Condors, the big birds seen as buzzards or circling vultures in old movies, were nearly extinct when the last nine were caught 20 years ago and taken to Southern California zoos for captive breeding as part of a recovery program. Now we have about 300 condors – more than two dozen of them once again soaring over Big Sur, including the first two chicks born there in more than a century. Others are in other parts of California and Arizona – including the Pinnacles east of the Salinas Valley – or still in the zoos, cared for as breeding stock in the recovery program. Thousands existed before the 1849 Gold Rush brought miners, settlers and hunters that gradually eliminated the large scavengers, but some can now be seen from Highway 1, usually near Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.

(Video of California Condors in Big Sur)

Mayor Clint Eastwood

2008-11-21T00:35:00.002-08:00

(Photo: The book cover of "The Carmel Campaign Scrapbook: Special Commemorative Souvenir Edition", published in 1986 by Joanne Mathewson from Carmel.)

When Clint Eastwood decided to run for mayor in 1986, the movie star campaigned by attending 55 teas and coffee klatches in Carmel homes to meet small groups of voters and convince them he was serious. He was elected that April with 75 percent of the vote in a very heavy turnout. During the two exciting years of Mayor Clint, tourism in the already crowded village increased by 10 to 15 percent, City Council meetings had to move to an auditorium to accommodate sight-seeers, gifts and invitations poured into City Hall, and the organizers of a visit by Pope John Paul II took special precautions to keep the mayor out of camera range so his presence wouldn't upstage the pontiff. The city also restructured the Planning Commission, expanded Harrison Memorial Library, sued the water district for a larger allocation, built more public toilets, repaired beach stairs, and legalized take-out ice cream cones.

Naming Pebble Beach

2008-11-21T00:35:00.001-08:00

(Photo: 18th hole at Pebble Beach by swang168, Creative Commons license.)

Pebble Beach acquired its name quite simply. Look at the beach behind The Lodge, next to the famous 18th hole of the celebrated golf course, along picturesque Stillwater Cove. If you see pebbles there, you're looking at the namesake of the resort community. If the name didn't exist by 1878 when the Pacific Improvement Company bought the area, it did soon afterwards because it was cited in 1880 in a guidebook published in San Francisco. The new owners started to develop the area in 1881 as a summer attraction for guests at the posh Hotel Del Monte in Monterey. Horse and carriage trails became 17 Mile Drive, then a log lodge opened at the prettiest spot in 1909. The original lodge burned down in 1917. A more elegant replacement was built quickly, using lumber from a demolished hotel in Pacific Grove, and opened in 1919. That one grew into today's Lodge at Pebble Beach.

The First Carmel

2008-11-21T00:34:00.001-08:00

Before Carmel-by-the-Sea became a community for artists, an investor tried to develop it as a summer retreat for Catholics. In 1885, Santiago Duckworth, a Monterey land agent, bought the area between what is now Highway 1 and Junipero Avenue, from Carmel Hill down to Ocean Avenue. He thought the Southern Pacific would extend its railroad tracks from Pacific Grove and run trains through Pebble Beach and over Carmel Hill to the Carmel Mission. That line would go right through the land he envisioned as "Carmel City." He subdivided it in 1888 and started selling residential lots for $20 to $25, sites in the business section for $50. Duckworth promoted his Catholic retreat idea as a rival to the Methodists in Pacific Grove, and sold about 200 lots before it was clear the railroad wasn't coming. He sold what was left of his land to another investor in 1892.

Red's Donuts

2008-11-20T23:57:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Courtesy of Wandering Eyre.)

One of the tastiest bits of Monterey history is Red's Donuts, producer of sinfully good pastries since 1950. The original Red's is still intact at 433 Alvarado St., a narrow store with the original racks, cases, and counter for the patrons who sit on the 12 stools or take bags of goodies to their offices and homes. It still uses the original recipes of founder Herman "Red" O'Donnell, though all the baking is now done at a larger shop three of his children opened in 1985 at 1646 Fremont Blvd. in Seaside. They truck the doughnuts back to the original store and to a number of groceries, restaurants, hotels, and offices in the area. The secret of Red's exceptional taste is in the flour: doughnuts made with potato flour "the old-fashioned way." Red, who died in 1974, used to peel the potatoes himself. Today's doughnut makers buy ready-to-use flour.

Chinese Settlers

2008-11-20T23:56:00.001-08:00

Chinese settlers first arrived in Monterey County in 1851 when a junk that sailed 7,000 miles from southern China drifted into a cove at Point Lobos. Four or five families aboard built wooden houses on the west shore of the cove, one of which still stands and is used as "The Whalers Cabin" museum. The Chinese immigrants fished and harvested abalone for years before some moved to Stillwater Cove in Pebble Beach in 1868 to live on land leased from David Jacks, and some moved to Point Alones in Pacific Grove to help establish a larger fishing village. The village, at a site now filled by Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, thrived for more than three decades as the Chinese fishermen caught tons of squid and dried it for export. It burned to the ground in 1906, in a fire many believe was deliberately set by hostile neighbors.

The Naming of Carmel

2008-11-20T23:55:00.001-08:00

(Image: Sebastian Vizcaino. Facsimile of 17th century engraving. Considered in the public domain)

Carmel is known around the world as a beautiful seaside resort, and it is known more locally for a variety of things and places – the one-square-mile Carmel-by-the-Sea village, the Mission just outside those boundaries, the Valley, the Highlands, the Meadows, the Woods, etc. The famous name actually comes from none of those; it originated with the river. Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino, the first European known to land on the Monterey Peninsula, walked with Carmelite friars to the top of the hill south of Monterey Bay in 1602 and saw the river cutting through a tree-filled valley and emptying into another bay. The gorgeous scene reminded the friars of Mount Carmel in what is now northern Israel and the West Bank, where the Carmelite order was formed. (Carmel in Hebrew can be translated as "garden.") Vizcaino and his landing party named this new place "El Rio de Carmelo." The name endured and spread.

Pebble Beach's Industrial Past

2008-11-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

Standing on a patio at Spanish Bay today, listening to bagpipes serenade a sunset over the Pacific, it's hard to imagine this as an industrial area. But it was. For more than seven decades, millions of tons of gleaming white sand were hauled off the beach west of 17 Mile Drive and taken to plants to make glass for windows, jars, stucco, and ceramics. The sand mining started circa 1900 and grew into an industry large enough to be compared to the booming sardine canneries in Monterey in the 1930s and '40s. Two processing and bagging plants off what is now Congress Road turned out a trainload of cleaned sand each day. Del Monte Properties Company made huge profits from the operation, enough to carry the company through the Depression. The plants closed in 1973, after the state enacted environmental laws to restrict the waste that can be dumped into the ocean.

Butterfly Season

2008-11-20T11:18:00.001-08:00

(Photo: Butterflies at the Pacific Grove Monarch Butterfly Reserve courtesy of the owner.) © Adam R. Paul)

When Pacific Grove school children parade through the streets this weekend to welcome monarch butterflies back for the winter, they won't be welcoming the same ones that were here last year. This year's monarchs will be the great-grandchildren of the ones that left in February and March. While the wintering generation lives six to eight months – feeding, riding trade winds and mating -- the four or five generations in between live only three to six weeks each. There is much mystery in it, and the Ventana Wildlife Society has been tagging butterflies recently to learn more. Soon after the wintering generation leaves the Central Coast for homes as far away as Canada, they deposit eggs on milkweed plants and die. The second generation lives a few weeks then deposits eggs and dies, as does the third and sometimes fourth. Then the next generation eats heartily to get ready for the winter trip to the coast.

(Video: Monarch butterflies in Pacific Grove)

Fort Ord's Mascot

2008-11-20T11:15:00.001-08:00

In 1941, ten months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the newly activated 7th Infantry at Fort Ord was able to indulge in a love of dogs that is still seen on the Monterey Peninsula. Among the base's 15,000 men lived 75 dogs. Private Everett Scott had left his 10-year-old airdale back at his farm in Kansas, and the grieving dog named Laddie had lost 15 of his 40 pounds in the three months since Scott arrived at Fort Ord. Laddie was flown the 2,000 miles to California to be re-united with his master. When he arrived at the post he was found wrapped in blankets and hot water bottles. Laddie perked up at the sound of Scott's voice and began eating again. The base veterinarian provided blood transfusions, injections, and brandy. Men at the base hoped that Laddie would enjoy his last years chasing rabbits around the Army Reservation. But Laddie survived only four days on the base. The 7th Infantry held a simple funeral for their new – and late – mascot.

The Monterey Gold Rush

2008-11-20T11:01:00.000-08:00

A bulldozer digging a foundation for a Monterey High School expansion 60 years ago created an unexpected gold rush when it overturned cans and jars filled with $20 gold coins. The money had been buried a few decades earlier by Will Martin, who trusted neither banks nor paper money. The gold drew a mob that scrambled through the field, following the bulldozer during the days, then digging at night by light of lanterns. "It was a pretty exciting time," recalled Mike Mairoana, who was 12. One of the lucky prospectors, Mike pulled out a can with 37 coins in it. Greedy adults mobbed him, relieved him of most of his find, and shoved him aside. The bulldozer operator saw it all and turned his machine around to move the crowd back from Mike and his "mine" until police arrived to escort the boy home safely. Mike ended up with 14 of the gold coins. He still has 13, which he uses to illustrate occasional talks to children about "the gold rush of Monterey."

Storybook Architecture

2008-11-16T11:02:00.000-08:00

(Photo: This was the last cottage Hugh Comstock built. It was completed in 1929, just months before the stock market crash. Courtesy of Linda Yvonne.)

"Storybook Architecture" is the name given by scholars to a delightful genre of buildings erected in the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. and England. (The style is also called "Hansel and Gretel," "Doll's House," "Fairy Tale" and "Provincial Revivalism.") Carmel is graced by many of these structures, created by Hugh Comstock. According to some sources, Comstock was inspired by illustrator Arthur Rackham. Maybe. According to John Robert Marlow, founder of www.storybookers.com, several spectacular storybook structures had been completed, or were underway, in Los Angeles by the time Comstock began work here in 1924. "Whether Comstock created his distinctive storybook 'look' independently, or was influenced by others, is unknown," says Marlow, "but without question, he was a master of the form."

Refinery for Moss Landing

2008-11-15T22:39:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Moro Cojo Slough, with the Moss Landing power plant towers in the distance, used with permission. Original source. © 2008 by Miles Daniels.)

The gentle Moro Cojo Slough in Moss Landing is owned by the Elkhorn Slough Foundation now, but four decades ago it was marked as the site of a giant oil refinery by Humble Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil, ancestor of ExxonMobil. The company bought 455 acres of property at the slough in 1965 to build a $70 million refinery to process 50,000 gallons of crude oil a day. Another 5 acres of beach property was to be the terminus of a pipeline moving crude onshore from big tankers anchored in Monterey Bay. The plan outraged some Monterey Peninsula residents, who argued that oil spills and smog would destroy the bay, ruin the tourist industry, and bring an end to agriculture in the Salinas Valley. Humble countered that there would be "no significant air pollution," and that the industry would help the county tax base and help fund public schools. The opponents, in just six days, got 12,000 signatures asking the county to reject the refinery application.

A number of retired industrialists, conservationists, and politicians led the fight against Humble Oil Company's plan to build a refinery at Moss Landing. Carmel photographer Ansel Adams and even former Governor Goodwin Knight joined the fray, with Knight warning: "Humble Oil will kill you. Don't let them." A fourth of Monterey County residents signed petitions against it, the Salinas Valley agriculture community was split, and county planners opposed it. But the county's Board of Supervisors, after a 17-hour hearing in December 1965, voted 3-2 in favor of the refinery, deciding the county could regulate air pollution. Courts upheld the approval, but directors and shareholders of parent Standard Oil got an earful at the annual shareholders meeting. In August 1966, Humble dropped the plan and announced that instead it would build a larger refinery in a more welcoming Benicia. Humble said opposition on the Monterey Peninsula was a factor, but engineering and soil tests at Moss Landing were more decisive.

Pelicans Are Back

2008-11-15T22:27:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Monterey Bay pelican taking off by Jane Vargas of
Monterey Bay Photos. Permission requested.)

In 1970 The New York Times grimly predicted that pelicans - "as enduring an element of the Monterey Bay scene as the sea itself" - would soon be extinct. This year, however, brown pelicans have become relatively common, and we can enjoy the delightful sight of them soaring low over Monterey and Carmel Bays, swooping down and grabbing fish. Their presence is part of a success story, evidence that there is less DDT in the ocean since the federal government banned its use in 1972. Pesticides that run off into the oceans are absorbed by fish the pelicans eat. DDT in particular then poisoned the pelicans and prevented normal development of their eggs. So few offspring were hatched that the brown pelicans went on the state and federal endangered species lists. They remain on the list, but their numbers have recovered, and several thousand young pelicans now hatch each spring and summer in their breeding sites in the Channel Islands and off the West Coast of Mexico.

(Video: Pelicans at Monastery Beach near Carmel.)

Sea Otters

2008-11-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Monterey Bay Otter eating a crab by Jane Vargas of Monterey Bay Photos. Permission requested.)

Hunters swept through California waters in the 1800s and killed thousands of southern sea otters for their luxurious fur. The species was nearly wiped out, but a tiny group of 32 otters survived near Big Sur. Their existence was kept secret by nature lovers until 1938. The feisty little critters at Monterey Bay Aquarium are descendants of that small group.

(Video: The Monterey Aquarium program to assist in the recovery of sea otters)

David Jack

2008-11-15T21:19:00.001-08:00

(Photo: David Jack, 1909 or earlier. Public domain. Original source.)

The greatest land owner in Monterey in the late 1800s was David Jacks, who bestowed his name upon Jacks Peak County Park and (probably) Monterey Jack cheese. He owned much of the town for more than 50 years. The Jacks fortune was eventually given to California colleges and universities, and to the city of Monterey in the form of Pacific House, Casa del Orio and Don Dahvee Park (the latter stemming from the name his Mexican friends and employees called him).

(Photo: Don Dahvee Park by Roger J. Inman, by permission.)

Forest Theater

2008-11-15T20:06:00.001-08:00

(Photo of Carmel sunset over the production of Julius Caesar at the Forest Theatre. Taken by Stephen Moorer, Carmel who has released it in to the Public domain.

The Forest Theater in Carmel is the soul of the community, but in 1971 it as nearly torn down. The village's mayor and city council wanted to replace it with a parking lot. Civic activists rose up in outrage, and, in 1972, won their battle to save the wonderful site. The theater continues to thrive today.

(Video: Scene from the Music Man at the Forest Theater in 2006.)

Monterey Pop Festival in 1967

2008-11-15T19:55:00.001-08:00

In June, 1967, history's first major rock festival took place in these parts – the Monterey International Pop Music Festival. Attendance was 200,000. The music was wonderfully eclectic, featuring Simon and Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, the Byrds, Laura Nyro, Canned Heat, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar and the first major U.S. performances by the Who and Jimi Hendrix (both of whom brought down the house). The festival was also rock's first large-scale charity benefit.

Video: Simon and Garfunckel at Monterey Pop in 1967

Carmel's Love of Nature

2008-11-15T19:54:00.001-08:00

Carmel's love of nature was present from the village's beginnings in the early 1900s. In those days, environmental awareness was rare. According to historians Harold and Ann Gilliam, Carmel "respected and enhanced the natural setting" from its very inception, and was perhaps the first town in the West to do so.

(Photo: Carmel River Estuary courtesy of Linda Yvonne.)

Proposition 20

2008-11-15T19:53:00.000-08:00

The early 1970s was a pivotal period for public concern about California's coastline (and Monterey's). The biggest triumph for coastal preservation came in 1972 with passage of Proposition 20, the Coastal Initiative, after a very tough campaign battle. Monterey County voted 58 percent in favor of the legislation.

(Image: Hank Ketchum, famous for "Dennis the Menace," lent his talents to the campaign for Proposition 20. Considered a Fair Use.)

Sardine Industry

2008-11-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

The year 1945 is often cited as the peak of the sardine industry in Monterey, with 19canneries and 20 reduction plants working full blast, and more than 100 fishing boats venturing forth in search of sardines. That year, Monterey ranked third in the world in total tonnage of fish caught behind Stavanger, Norway and Hull, England.

Maybe overfishing caused the collapse of the Monterey sardine industry in the 1940s and '50s, as many people believe, but maybe not. Scientists have not reached a consensus on the question, pointing to deep natural biological shifts in the Pacific Ocean as a possible culprit in the plummeting stocks of sardines caught locally. Research on this topic continues today at local institutions.

(Photo: Abandoned canneries on Cannery Row today courtesy of Bill Selak, Creative Commons license.)

Hotel Del Monte

2008-11-14T10:11:00.001-08:00

(Photo: Hermann Hall at the Naval Postgraduate School, considered in the public domain.) Hermann is the main building of the former Del Monte Hotel.)

The Monterey Peninsula was sleepy in the 1860s and '70s, but change arrived in 1880 with the opening of the Hotel Del Monte, a resort located on the grounds of what is now the Naval Postgraduate School. A favorite recreation of hotel visitors was to ride by horseback or carriage toward Pebble Beach, a round-trip of about 17 miles. Hence the name of one of the most beautiful excursions in the world, 17-Mile Drive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

2008-11-14T10:01:00.003-08:00

Robert Louis Stevenson nearly died in Carmel Valley in 1879, but maybe, in a funny way, the incident was the best thing to ever happen to him. While here on a visit, the 28-year-old Scottish author set off alone on a horse, but he collapsed miles from anywhere, surviving for three days by drinking coffee. He barely pulled through. (He was weakened by lifelong tuberculosis.) Stevenson subsequently wrote several classics including "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped." Could it be that his creative juices were somehow jarred loose by his close encounter with death? (Incidentally, "Treasure Island" contains passages probably inspired by Point Lobos.)
(Portrait by Girolamo Nerli, 1892)

Japanese Sub Off Of Pebble Beach

2008-11-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

A Japanese submarine attacked a U.S. vessel off Cypress Point on Dec. 20,1941. The sub I-23 surfaced about 20 miles offshore and fired eight shells at the American oil tanker Agwiworld, missing completely. (Generally speaking, says one historian, Japanese submarines "weren't very effective" during the Second World War.) Local golfers watched as the tanker fled toward Santa Cruz, but, reported the Monterey Herald, "thought little more about it."

Eucalyptus Trees and Butterflies

2008-11-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

Pacific Grove's monarch butterflies love to cluster in eucalyptus trees and Monterey pines (scientists call this "overwintering"). But why are those non-native eucalyptus trees there? Part of the answer can be found in the 19th century, when malaria was a scourge in California. Some doctors believed, incorrectly, that the disease was caused by "bad air" and felt the pungent oil of eucalyptus would clean the air. Thousands of the trees were planted here and around the state.
(Photo: Monarch Butterflies cling to eucalyptus trees in the sanctuary in Pacific Grove, CA. Courtesy of Inetours.)

Locally Shot Movies

2008-11-14T09:35:00.000-08:00

Dozens of movies have been filmed on the Monterey Peninsula, including scenes in "Tortilla Flat" (1942), "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986) and "Basic Instinct" starring Sharon Stone (1992). Carmel's own Clint Eastwood figures prominently in at least two locally-shot films: "Play Misty For Me" (1971) and "Don't Pave Main Street: Carmel's Heritage," a solid history documentary from 1994. (Photo: movie poster for Tortilla flat)

John L. D. Roberts

2008-11-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

John L.D. Roberts, a doctor who moved to this area from the East Coast in 1887, was a key figure in the building of Highway 1 from the Carmel area to San Simeon. (He also founded the city of Seaside .) He loved Big Sur, riding horseback often along the coast. With the proliferation of automobiles, he began dreaming of a beautiful highway. (The Ford Model T, in 1908, made the car a mass market item.) In 1919, thanks partly to Roberts' advocacy, the state budgeted for the road. Construction on this hazardous project began in 1922 and was completed 70 years ago, on June 27, 1937

Highway 1 along the rugged Big Sur coast has been hailed as the most scenic road in America since it opened 70 years ago in 1937. The highway, sought by hotel owners and would-be resort developers, made it possible to drive from the Monterey Peninsula to Hearst Castle in San Simeon year-round without worrying about winter washouts on the dirt roads inland. It was also an engineering and transportation triumph, routing automobiles along the sides of cliffs and over 41 creeks, rivers and coves that break up jagged shoreline. The highway took 18 years to build as workers, including many state convicts, blasted through mountains, filled in coves, constructed concrete bridges and hung pavement on steep dropoffs. It has required a lot of maintenance since, while it has carried millions of travelers through the breathtaking scenery.

(Photo: John Roberts from the city of Seaside archives.)

Louis S. Slevin

2008-11-14T00:29:00.000-08:00

In Carmel's early years, in the first half of the 20th century, a general store owned by Louis S. Slevin was a center for life and commerce. In those days, general stores were a combination Walmart, post office and meeting hall, with plenty of leisurely conversation about the issues of the day. Some folks stopped by Slevin's store on a daily basis. His walls featured photos of local scenery, shot by Slevin himself, who was inclined, at any moment, to load up his cameras and hang a sign saying, "Closed, gone to the countryside." Today, his photos are prized by historians and aficionados.

Carmel as an Artist Colony

2008-11-14T00:19:00.000-08:00

Carmel's beginnings as an artist's colony can be traced to the arrival in June, 1905 of a talented San Francisco poet named George Sterling (1869-1926), friend of Jack London and protégé of Ambrose Bierce. Sterling and his wife Carrie wanted to live cheaply and healthfully, so they used several acres of land to raise vegetables, chickens and rabbits, and dined often on the freshest of seafood. Sterling also wished to avoid the constant romantic temptations of city life. (He famously described San Francisco as a "cool, grey city of love.") The Sterlings were soon followed to Carmel-by-the-Sea by photographer Arnold Genthe and novelist Mary Austin.

(Photo: Sterling in 1907, in the public domain.)

Dogs in Carmel

2008-11-13T23:48:00.000-08:00

"Dogs are distinct and important personalities in Carmel," wrote local journalist and historian Daisy Bostick in 1945. "Their numbers are bewildering...You can scarcely be a real Carmelite without a dog attached to your household." One of the most famous dogs in Carmel history was Pal, a friendly mutt of the 1930s and early '40s who achieved his distinction for nothing more complicated than being sweet-natured and always ready for a ramble to the beach with anyone who asked. Pal died in 1943 and is buried on the grounds of the Forest Theater. His tombstone reads, "Carmel's Dog."

(Photo credit: Three dogs enjoying Carmel Beach courtesy of owner. © 2008 by Shaghaghi)

Carmel Mission

2008-11-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Reduced from a photograph taken in 2004, courtesy of Stephen Lea, subject to the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.)

Spanish-American culture fell into disfavor in California in the mid-1800s as "Yankee culture" came to dominance, with the seizing of California by the U.S. from Mexico in 1846-48 and the arrival of new settlers. The Carmel Mission crumbled to ruin, one of many Spanish-American sites to suffer. But then, in the 1880s, gifted writers fell in love with the old ways – Helen Hunt Jackson with her seminal book, "Glimpses of California and the Missions," George Wharton James, Hubert Howe Bancroft, and others. They ushered in a new era of appreciation for the state's past. Loving restoration of the Carmel mission began in 1884.

U.S. Open and Pebble Beach

2008-11-12T19:42:00.001-08:00

Samuel F.B. Morse ( (1885-1969) was the most important figure in the development of Pebble Beach. However, he sometimes forged ahead with too much gusto, as in the early 1960s, when he decided to bring the U.S. Open to Pebble Beach Golf Links. The U.S. Open people disdained the idea, insisting that the tourney be held at a private club. No problem, said Morse - in 1963 he restructured the beloved public links into the Pebble Beach Golf Club, available to only a select few. Thousands of golfers were stunned and upset. The story has a happy ending - Morse and his team changed their minds and restored public status for the course, and the U.S. Open came here in 1972 and returns in 2010.(Photo: http://www.pebblebeach.com/ images/history/1915_Morse_s.jpg)

Charles Crocker

2008-11-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

A tycoon named Charles Crocker (1822-1888) is the single most important figure in the early development of Monterey Peninsula, because it was he who got excited about tourism potential here, and led the building of the magnificent Hotel Del Monte, which opened in 1880. Crocker financed his Monterey venture with money he made building the Central Pacific Railroad, a assive and dangerous project that he completed years ahead of the government deadline. The Crocker Cypress Grove, near Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, is probably named after Charles Crocker.(Photo: from the SCV Historical Society and considered to be in the public domain.)

Robinson Jeffers

2008-11-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

When the poet Robinson Jeffers died in Carmel in 1962, he was largely forgotten by the American public, according to scholar Robert Flagg. This soon changed. In 1965, the Sierra Club published a major book titled "Not Man Apart: Photographs of the Big Sur Coast," which included photography by Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and others, and lines by Jeffers, who spent his lifetime in Carmel meditating on nature and on what he believed was the decline of civilization. "Not Man Apart" was an important moment in the environmental movement and helped position Jeffers as California's greatest poet. (Photo:Robinson Jeffers, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, July 9, 1937. Considered in the public domain).

Joseph Campbell

2008-11-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

Joseph Campbell became a superstar of public TV in the 1980s when he discussed mythology in interviews with Bill Moyers. The conversations are one of the most compelling events in the history of television. What's not commonly known is that some aspects of Campbell's worldview were shaped by the Monterey Peninsula in the early 1930s. During a visit here, he befriended the great marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who Campbell said became a "special teacher of consciousness." Thanks to Ricketts, close friend of author John Steinbeck, Campbell fell in love with the Monterey Bay seashore, and used the lessons of the tide pools – ecology, balance, struggle, connectedness – to inform his pioneering exploration of the world of myth. Campbell made an annual pilgrimage to Big Sur to celebrate his birthday at Esalen in the last fifteen years of his life. (Photo: copyright © Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF.org). Used with permission.)

Marilyn Monroe, Artichoke Queen

2008-11-12T10:58:00.001-08:00

Marilyn Monroe was crowned California's first "Artichoke Queen" in 1948 in Castroville, 15 miles north of Monterey. We don't know exactly why she consented to the coronation, but we can guess that it had something to do with the fact that she was a starlet, eager for publicity. Or could she have been motivated by the supposed aphrodisiacal properties of the delicious vegetable? In any case, Castroville welcomed her happily. The town is the self-proclaimed "Artichoke Center of the World," launching production in 1922 and producing astonishing quantities today, aided by suitable soil and lovely summer fog. Castroville celebrates its artichoke festival in May of each year. (Photo: Marilyn Monroe, three years before she became the Artichoke Queen; photo from the now defunct Yank Magazine.)

Early Baseball In Carmel

2008-11-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

The game of softball was invented in 1888 in Chicago. In those days it was called "indoor baseball." It took the name "softball" in 1926, which is the approximate time that it became quite the thing to do in Carmel on a Sunday afternoon. Ever creative, ever ahead of their time, Carmelites formed the first softball league in the West, the Abalone League, honoring the famous mollusk. (Could this name be a precursor of another athletic mollusk, the banana slug of UC Santa Cruz?) Each team in the Abalone League was required to have at least one female member. Singing was part and parcel of the activity, with "The Abalone Song" wafting cheerily across Carmel Point.

Toughest Local Golf Hole

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Pebble Beach, Cypress Point and Spyglass Hill constitute "the most challenging cluster of golf courses in the world, not to mention the most breathtaking," writes journalist Jaime Diaz. And the toughest hole on the professional golf tour is the
16th at Cypress Point, says the PGA. For example, at the 1990 AT&T, this par three hole played to a stroke average of 3.874. The tee shot needs to carry over an ocean inlet, and the tiny green is protected by 50-foot cliffs. At the 1959 Crosby, a pro named Hans Merrell took a 19 there. Yep. Nineteen. Maybe this sad event helped inspire the scene in "Tin Cup" where Kevin Costner keeps dropping his drive in the water.

(Photo: Cypress Point, #16 in 2004 by schnaars used under a Creative Commons license.)

William Ritschel

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Many local artists have struggled to paint the sea – its moods, colors, movement, transparency, and opaqueness – but only a few have achieved mastery. One of these is William Ritschel (1864-1949). Born in Germany, he spent his youth as a sailor, settling in Carmel in 1911. (He was a contemporary of Joseph Conrad, the great novelist; the two men share a restless obsession with the sea.) Ritschel painted here for decades; today, his works are treasured, selling for $3,000 to $500,000. (He also helped design the ambience of the village.) The Monterey Museum of Art displays some of Ritschel's works. "When the dust settles," says one L.A. expert, "California Impressionists, including Ritschel, will be ranked with the French Impressionists." (Photo: illustration of Monterey coast by Ritschel; available for sale from artnet.com)

Buying and Selling of Pebble Beach

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In 1978, 20th Century Fox bought the Pebble Beach Co. for $72 million, including golf courses and hotels. Thus began a flurry of buying and selling of the property that lasted for 20 years. The next step came in the early '80s when investor Marvin Davis bought Fox for $722 million, gaining title to a slew of holdings, including Pebble Beach Co. "I never fall in love with any asset," Davis told Golf Digest, "but I came closest [with Pebble Beach]." Nonetheless he allowed his arm to be twisted in 1990 when Japanese investor Minoru Isutani agreed to pay $841 million for the Pebble Beach Co. alone.

When he bought Pebble Beach Co. for $841 million in 1990, Minoru Isutani became a figure of controversy. During this period, many people in the U.S. worried about Japan's economic clout. (The 1992 novel "Rising Sun" by Michael Crichton exemplifies the overheated rhetoric of the time.) Local folks were also stunned that Isutani wanted to privatize Pebble Beach Golf Links. He probably should have known that Samuel Morse's privatization plan, in the early 1960s, collapsed in a heap. Isutani's strategy was OK'ed by Monterey County, but the California Coastal Commission said "no." In 1992, Isutani sold Pebble Beach Co. to a Japanese consortium for $500 million.

Rumors swirled in the 1990s that the Japanese were preparing to sell the Pebble Beach Co. – maybe to the Sultan of Brunei, or the U.S. Golf Association, or someone else. Finally, in early 1999, the property went on the auction block (four golf courses, three hotels, and other assets). What Golf Digest calls the "sale of the century" soon commenced. The winner, in the spring of '99, for $820 million, was a group assembled by businessman Peter Ueberroth, including Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer, Dick Ferris and about 120 limited partners. For many people here, the American take-over was a welcome development after years of foreign ownership. As one observer noted, "People get pretty emotional about Pebble Beach."

Local Stanford University Influence

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Stanford University connects deeply to the Monterey Peninsula. The most significant link is Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, a world-renowned site for marine biology research and instruction, founded by the university in 1892. Another Stanford/Peninsula connection is "Professors' Row" in Carmel, inaugurated by David Starr Jordan, the school's first president, who built a summer home here in the early 1900s. (One good source says he arrived in 1905; Jordan's memoir, not always reliable about dates, says 1909.) He and his wife Jessie built their cottage at Camino Real and Seventh – an "exquisite spot," he said, where the family spent "many delightful days." A number of Stanford faculty families followed Jordan to the village.

(Photo: Aerial shot of the Hopkins Marine Station.)
( Credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service.)