Pescadero Memories

[Note: I wrote this in 1977]

As spokesman for a circle of prominent South Coast residents, Dr. Isaac Goodspeed faced the press in 1868 and flatly denied accusations that local citizens planned to resist efforts to sever Pescadero from Santa Cruz County.

He had the petition to prove it–including an impressive list of taxpayers ready to unite Pescadero with San Mateo County.

All the signers said the same thing: The only road leading to the county seat in Santa Cruz, 40 miles south, was impassable most of the year. That meant the Pescaderans had to travel and extra 90 miles, via San Mateo and San Jose to reach Santa Cruz.

Hopes were not raised by talk of improving the closer route. Even a master engineer, the Pescaderans said, could not build a road through the Waddell bluffs at the ocean’s edge. The bluffs formed a natural, impenetrable barrier between Pescadero and Santa Cruz.

Pulling out of Santa Cruz and joining San Mateo County appealed to everyone. Redwood City was a mere 20 miles away and stages headed over the mountains daily.

The so-called “Boundary Bill” sailed through the state legislature with little opposition in 1868. The County of San Mateo welcome its new taxpaying citizens and surveyors added 90,000 acres to official maps.

Hi June,
A return trip to the tunnel is on hold. But here’s a few more pictures of it. The mud below the entrance is extremely slick because of the small rivulet that flows along the now eroded floor. I’ve got all my equipment together for an attempt. I just need some good weather. It looks like a fun way to end the year during the day on New Year’s Eve. Enjoy. John

Email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

 Story by John Vonderlin (email John: benloudman@sbc.global.net

Hi June,
Knowing a picture can be worth a thousand words you might want to include the picture numbers from the California Coastal Records Project (CCRP), that cover the Lou Denny Wayne shipwreck area.

The promontory with the pass-through sea cave with the unusual sealife inside it, is shown at the extreme lower left in Picture #6331. You can see the difficulty of passing by this area without a very low tide.

The next picture to the northwest #6330, with a large wave crashing on the promontory that the semi-submerged cave cuts through, illustrates the caution necessary and danger posed to anyone that tries to go this way. In the lower left hand corner of that same picture is the site of the Lou Denny Wayne’s grounding.

With the only way off that beach being to climb the cliffs in the dark of night, my hat comes off to the captain’s son who accomplished that.

Finally, if you look carefully at the large file of Picture #6327 , you can see the top of the arch I mentioned. It’s part of the promontory about 2/3 of the way from the left of the picture. The arch is just to the left of the fountain of spray from the wave crashing into the promontory. Picture #200401039, which is of the same area, just two years later, shows the arch a little more clearly in the large file.

A WARNING: I urge anyone attempting to follow our path to be extremely careful. You might find yourself between a rock and a hard place and nobody is going to hear your scream for help. Enjoy. John

The class occupied one room in the local school building and it is said that students who failed to study were not allowed to attend.

Story by John Vonderlin coming soon

Story by John Vonderlin (email John: benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,
As you detailed in your book Half Moon Bay Memories, Pigeon Point’s history has been punctuated by a series of disastrous shipwrecks. The grounding, the night of November 28th, and subsequent destruction a few days later of the classic wooden boat, the “Lou Denny Wayne,” is just the latest addition to that long list of tragedies.

As I related in an earlier email, while collecting marine debris north of Ano Nuevo point early in December, I found a pair of expensive, sand-clogged Henri Lloyd bibs. When the owner of the Lou Denny Wayne, identified them as his, I promised to drop them off the next time I swung through Santa Cruz. Between that oddity and having read the newspaper accounts of the mysterious accident two miles offhore that hulled the boat, resulting in the desperate decision to try to run it aground on the nearby rocky coast, my curiosity was piqued: Where had it gone aground and what was left?

The newspaper described it as one mile south of Pigeon Point Lighthouse, and even had a good picture of the boat taken from the cliff above. But, extrapolating from the rocks pictured in the online newspaper photo to the series of California Coastal Records Project (CCRP) photos of that part of the coast proved difficult.

The shore is so rocky there that even a small variation of tide can change the exposed rocks’ appearance or submerge them entirely. However, I did tentatively identify a spot I thought was probably the site.

It just so happens this two mile stretch of beach, from Pigeon Point south to Gazos Creek, is one of my favorite float-collecting areas. It’s isolated, lined with difficult to climb cliffs, whose tops are covered by no-tresspassing farm fields. Much of it is virtually inaccessible except during a very low tide, and it has numerous promontories splitting the coast into a series of hidden pocket coves. All of those factors conspire to limit my competition and keep whatever floats ashore there for me to collect. Though even, I, “the Intrepid Traveler,” had never made it the full length.

To the south from Gazos Creek, a steep cliff, holed by the pass-through sea cave that has the best sea life

in it of any one I know of on this coast, had always stopped me. And from the north another steep-faced promontory, ending in deep water, had always left about three quarters of a mile unexplored in the middle stretch.

Well, I decided to introduce my curiosity to the extremely low tide on Saturday and go on a adventure.

Parking at the last place legally accessible south of Pigeon Point, we hiked through the brush in a small canyon, then climbed down the hidden ladder

somebody put there a few years ago and headed south. We weren’t expecting to find many floats, as the North Pacific SubTropical gyre has not been disturbed for almost two years by the consistent Westerlies necessary to bring its treasures ashore, And even the buoys from local crabbers have been greatly reduced in number, thanks to the late season start caused by the oil spill. Hmm. I wonder if I could file a claim too?

We weren’t expecting to find the great number of abalone shells that had been driven ashore by the same giant waves that destroyed the Lou Denny Wayne, killed two crabbers out of HMB, and a veteran big wave surfer at Ghost Trees. Unfortunately, I’ve given up collecting shells, feeling they’re too common and not useful for my art.

After about an hour of walking along short pocket beaches, then clambering around the promontories defining them, on wet, algae-slicked rocks, we reached the spot where I thought the Lou Denny Wayne had gone aground.

Absolutely nothing was left. Sigh. Except, to turn around and retrace our hazardous route. But, it was too easy to imagine the possibility of a broken ankle or wrist from a fall given our tiredness taking that route. Besides this was virgin territory and maybe I had been wrong about its watery grave’s location. The possibility of finding somewhere to climb the cliff and dash across the farmer’s field seemed reasonable, so we continued south.

Soon we were totally surprised to come upon this beautiful arch. Surprised, because I’d looked at every one of the large file pictures for this area on CCRP and hadn’t seen any arches at all, let alone this beauty.

The promontory, whose gap the arch spanned, projected into deep water, necessitating passing under it to go any further south. Fortunately, the rocks above the pool under the arch provided good footing and it was easily accomplished.

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Story by John Vonderlin (email John: benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,

Part I: I’m Tired

Yesterday’s expedition was quite amazing. The first important event occurred at Pescadero Beach when I added pictures of six more tires coughed up from the ocean to my “101 Tires” artplay project, or: “I’m So Tired,” as I sometimes refer to it.

While I’m sure the poor sanitation worker who has to load them onto his truck will be irritated– along with his private contractor boss, whose profit margin is wounded by the $7 a tire dump fee he must pay– I was quite excited by reaching another significant number.

Last time it was 5 tires bringing the total to 51, just edging past the halfway mark, in any endeavor a memorable point. This time, in one fell swoop. I reached 57, a much more powerful number.

Part II: Meanings Behind The Number 57

By the way, if you’ve ever wondered where the expression, “one fell swoop,” originated, it’s apparently one of the myriad things ole Bill Shakespeare contributed to our language. Shakespeare is first recorded as using it, in Macbeth.

When Macduff hears that his family has been murdered, he says in disbelief:

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

The collective image that Shakespeare’s audience would have brought to mind was a falcon plummeting out of the sky to snatch its prey (a kite was a bird of prey before it became a paper and wooden toy.)

…more coming…

The Cemetery in the Sand Dunes

In the summer of 2001 something white in the sand caught the eye of a hiker as he walked among the wind-eroded dunes near Point Ano Nuevo. There was something about it that made him start digging.

He quickly uncovered a shocking discovery that made him think violence had happened here: Murder.

For there, only inches beneath the sand in front of him, he later told the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department, there was a skull.

Actually, the sheriff’s investigation would find there were many skulls there and many leg and arm and back and rib bones. Dozens of them. Enough to fill a cemetery.

And indeed, that’s what the hiker had found, a cemetery lost for decades among the shifting sand dunes.

While wrong about this being a murder scene, the hiker was right in surmising that these unfortunates had died violently and the clue was in the roaring of the surf that pounded the nearby beaches.

The sound of the surf is probably the last thing these poor souls heard and is precisely why most of them died.

These dead people had once strode the decks of sailing ships such as the “Sir John Franklin”, the “Coya” and the “Hellespont”.

All perished in the 1860s when their ships, blinded by the heavy fog, struck reefs between Pigeon Point and Ano Nuevo and sunk wuth heavy losses of life. The dead were buried side-by-side in a dunes area originally fenced off and marked with headstones.

The remains of ship’s officials were generally not found at these sites as relatives often claimed them for burial in family plots.

Overtime the strong winds disturbed the sand dune environment, exposing the cemetery site. the shipwreck victims had been buried in redwood coffins–but even this superior wood could not withstand the effect of the sometimes brutal weather and the coffins are now the consistency of wet cardboard.

When I last worked on this story, park rangers were working to stabilize this historical shipwreck gravesite so not to disturb the human remains. A pedestrian boardwalk was to be built with interpretive signs enabling the visitor to learn about the cemetery (and at the same time they will be advised of the laws against disturbing archaeological remains).

(Photo: Raymond Watson)

The wreck of the Hellespoint fed fuel to a growing movement seeking government funds for construction of a lighthouse along this notorious stretch of shoreline…but when they first chose to buy Ano Nuevo, and finding the asking price too high, the government settled on nearby Pigeon Point.

Workers completed the 100-foot tower built on solid rock in 1872. Besides featuring a revolving lens made in France (which originally wound up like a grandfather clock), the elegant lighthouse used 500,000 bricks and iron work in its construvction.

Captain J.W. Patterson, “an old salt,” and who arrived aboard the ship ‘Mentor’ in 1823, was put in charge of the new tower.

Despite the presence of a lighthouse at Pigeon Point (and hopes expressed for another at Pillar Point), the steamer ‘Columbia’ found herself stranded there in 1897. Local residents reportedly rushed to the scene where they stripped the staterooms of white and gold moulding which they used for picture frames.

Others removed copper wire and many observed that nearly every house in the vicinity was equipped with a copper wire clothesline. The tons of white lead discovered aboard the ‘Columbia’ was used to give homes in Pescadero a fresh coat of white paint. One man earned so much money on the wreck that he bought himself a new home in Spanishtown (later called Half Moon Bay.)

And some say that although the tower at Pigeon Point still lights the way for those who sail by, the rocky shoreline holds an uncertain fate for the unlucky few who lose their way.

[Note: I wrote this in 1977.]

The voyage was not a smooth one as Frederick Wilson steered the American ship, Hellespont, along the rocky California coast in November of 1868. Not only dark weather but ruthless winds and a boiling sea blinded the way in the early morning hours.

Captain Cornelius Soule (well known in San Francisco for his fast passages on the “Panama” from New York), believed the Hellepont to be 20 miles out at sea. When the captain suddenly saw the breakers ahead, he kept a cool head issuing commands to “Wear ship“–meaning to change the course away from the wind.

Yet instead of tacking out to sea, the Hellespont easily glided in among the ruthless breakers. The first time she struck heavily, crashing against the black reefs. The second time the waves swung the Hellespont around wildly, striking her broadside.

Captain Soule emerged from the cabin holding an axe and ordered the crew to cut away the masts which they did. As the masts fell overboard, they smashed the lifeboats to pieces. Without warning, a huge breaker struck, this time splitting the Hellespont in half. The tremendous impact ripped apart the main deck and carried it away to sea.

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