First Farms in Carmel Valley

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)

Baez in Carmel

(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."

Rosie's Cracker Barrel

(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.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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)

William Ritschel

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)

Edward Weston

Edward Weston (1886-1958), a Carmel resident, was one of the great photographers of the 20th century, ranking with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams and a handful of others, in the opinion of photography scholar Becky Senf of the University of Arizona. In the 1920s, Weston and other California photographers yanked their medium out of the Victorian doldrums of "pictorialism" and led it into the bright light of modernism, the powerful movement that affected all the arts after World
War I. Weston's skill can be seen in his 1927 creation "Nautilus," on display at the Monterey Museum of Art through July 22. Weston Gallery in Carmel, one of the leading photography dealerships in the world, displays a number of his works.
(Photo credit: Imogen Cunningham's 1922 portrait of Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston)

Innovation in Carmel Valley

(Photo: Edward Berwick's farm in Carmel Valley in 1909, now in the public domain.)

California farmers and ranchers are famous for their willingness to innovate - as in, for instance, their recent advances in organic farming. Some of the roots of this taste for experiment can be found in Carmel Valley, in the 19th century, in the person of Edward Berwick, one of the key agriculturalists in the history of the state. London-born, Berwick arrived in the valley in the late 1860s, at a time when wildcats still prowled and the occasional grizzly bear passed through. He bought a 120-acre tract for $500 and launched experimental farming endeavors, including the resurrection of the Winter Nelis pear, a forgotten varietal from the mission era. The Berwick Orchard became "world famous," writes historian Augusta Fink, and Berwick's pears were coveted by the crowned heads of Europe. His success attracted other innovative growers to the valley, as well as the state.