Carmel's Bell Tower

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

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

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

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)

Historic Ruts

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

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.

Carmel's Bohemian Error

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

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."

Cross Words

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.

Images Sought

(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)

Counting Trees

(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.

Sunset Center

( 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

(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.

Clint Eastwood and Misson Ranch

(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.

Clint Eastwood at Ford Ord

(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.

Mayor Clint Eastwood

(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.

The First Carmel

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.

The Naming of Carmel

(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.

Storybook Architecture

(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."

Forest Theater

(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.)