California’s 17-Mile Drive is an amazing trail of nature and history, all conveniently lined up along a road that skirts the coast of the Monterey Peninsula. The land it’s part of, about half of the peninsula, belongs to a private company, The Pebble Beach Company. You may have heard that name. The golf people, with multiple courses, sand traps, and fancy fairway-facing homes.
But look the other way, facing the Pacific and Monterey Bay: Seascapes, animal antics, cypress groves—it’s all there, with frequent turnoffs for views and for historical and natural information.
Not all of the animal action is an official part of the drive….
The signage along the way mixes bits of history and legend with natural history; not only the look of the coastline but why this area formed a natural harbor, and what plant life is native and which, like the ice plant, is not.
In places the sea looks fairly calm, but around a bend it takes on a much rougher aspect.
The currents and rocks can be deceptive, and the area has had many shipwrecks. This one took place in 1906, just near the scene below it. As the sign explains, the sea and rocks haven’t changed very much, but charts and instruments have.
For an easterner like me, this sign was a little surprising! Although, we may have them on the Atlantic without my noticing. In any case, I didn’t see anyplace I was likely to get to if one came along…
Among the highlights along the Drive are Bird Island and Seal Island, two small spots that were laid bare years ago and have become favored resting spots for the species named, but not necessarily where they are ‘supposed to.’ I didn’t see many birds on Seal Island, but on Bird Island…just look!
These guys must have been voted off the island, because they were just hanging around on the beach. Occasionally one of them, most often the smaller ones, would abruptly put its head up and begin humping across the sand to another spot.
These guys were on the same beach as the seals, but at a safe distance.
This is the Lone Cypress, which is the jealously-guarded logo also of the Pebble Beach Company. Along the drive there are cypress groves, representing what were once larger forests in the area, as well as the hardy individuals that find a place to root along the rocky shore.
At Pescadero Point, along the drive, there are even ‘ghost cypress’ trees that local legend associates with a ghostly ‘Lady in Lace.’ In death, their shapes remind people of witches and spooks. There’s a fear that a beetle blight that has been spreading might turn all of California’s cypress pines to ghosts.
And here’s where we veer back into history, and then into celebrities: the ‘Lady in Lace’ is supposed to be the spirit of Dona Maria, Carmen Garcia Barreto, widow of a Spanish colonial landowner, who owned and then sold off 4,000 acres in 1846 for $500. It may not have been a bad price, because after several sales in later years, it sold at auction in 1862 for $480.
The original indigenous inhabitants were long gone by then, although traces of their time can still be found. After the 1862 sale, the owner leased the land to the China Man Hop Company, a small village of about 30 Chinese fishermen. Their site, too, is still marked.
Then come the big names: in 1880, Jacks sold the land to The Big Four, the railroad magnates Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington and Leland Stanford. They formed the Pacific Improvement Company and laid out the 17-Mile Drive, originally a carriage road. Along the way, they named it the Del Monte Reservation, and built the Hotel Del Monte. It quickly became a popular spot with the well-to-do, including Pres. Benjamin Harrison who was apparently needed elsewhere: He told a local newspaper that “This is a lovely spot. I only wish I could stay here a week.”
The hotel burned in 1887, and its replacement in 1926. The third hotel, taken over by the Navy during World War II is still in military use, but near the end of the drive, at the ‘village’ of Pebble Beach there are accommodations.
The next owner, who bought the company in 1919, is a familiar name: Samuel F. B. Morse—but not the one you’re probably thinking of. Samuel Finley Brown Morse was a distant cousin of S. F. Breese Morse, painter and telegraph inventor. Morse continued developing the property, adding more golf courses and encouraging construction of more mansions. In 1977, it changed its name from Del Monte to Pebble Beach—just in time to become part of 20th Century Fox.
And we finish with the last round of celebrity owners: Marvin Davis became the owner when he bought Fox. When Davis sold Fox to Rupert Murdoch, he carved out Pebble Beach from the deal and then sold it to a Japanese resort company; in 1999 it was sold to the present owners: Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer and Peter Ueberroth. Yes, that Clint Eastwood. Yes, that Arnold Palmer.
