Pescadero Memories

[Image below from Colonel Albert Evan's book, "A La California."

New-old story by June Morrall

“Shore Whaling at Pigeon Point”

A spectacular red-orange glow accompanied the sunrise just as a school of humpback whales revealed their gleaming black backs on the horizon. Since heading north from their winter breeding grounds in warmer southern waters, the whales had covered a great distance.

From time to time they leaped through the waves. And as they neared the whaling station at Pigeon Point in the summer of 1871, the humpbacks disappeared beneath the sea to feed on sardines. When the whales surfaced again to blow, two lookouts posted on the cliffs above Pigeon Point instantly recognized the humpback’s short, thick body.

The Portuguese whalers, who barely concealed their heavy accents, didn’t hesitate to describe this season as the worst yet. Now, as they peered excitedly through their “sea glasses” at the humpbacks, the men blamed a steady and constant barrage of heavy winds for the less than ideal whaling conditions. Not only that, they confided, but over the years, the number of whales that traveled up and down the California coast actually had declined.

Obviously, they had known better times.

So far the men had captured a single whale this season, and that one taken a couple of weeks earlier, barely produced 25 barrels of oil. While a very large bull (or male) could yield up to 100 barrels, the average whale processed at Pigeon Point produced about 35.

One of the whalers (who had recently arrived from his home in the Azores where he learned the art of whaling as a kid) now bragged to a reporter about a captured whale that gave up more than 90 barrels of oil. (Whale oil was used in place of the electric light which had not yet arrived on the Coastside. In fact, electricity did not come to Pescadero until the mid-1920s, much later than on the east side of the redwood covered mountains, near Stanford University.)

The newcomer whaler quickly pointed out that size did not determine the amount of oil extracted. It was fat, he said, that made the big difference.

As the whales traveled north from their tropical “vacation,” the cows (or females), were skinny because they had recently given birth to calves Back home in the cooler Artic waters of the North Pole, they fattened up, and when they headed back south to the warmer seas, the whalers at Pigeon Point anxiously awaited their prey–for it was now that the fatty whales would yield the highest percentage of oil, and the reward was in the profits.

Meanwhile, the humpbacks played in the waves several miles offshore, obviously unaware of what fate may have in store for them. In the background, two experienced Portuguese whalers crouched low on the cliffs and studied the movement of the humpbacks. They were the lookouts. Behind them stood a dozen neat cottages, home to 17 men and their families.

At Pigeon Point, many of these whalers, who had earlier worked some 14 years at the Monterey Whaling Station, maybe two hours to the south, worked out a business relationship based on the rules of an equal partnership.

On the sandy beach below, two crews consisting of six men each, suddenly shoved off from shore in two very long single masted boats, whaling boats. They hunted in pairs for safety reasons, an important habit learned through years of trial and error. An occupational habit always included the possibility of an enraged whale swamping a boat, drowning all those on board.

The boats were equipped with one or more of Greener’s harpoon guns, which when mounted moved 360 degrees and resembled a small swivel gun. They also had a bomb lance gun which fired an exploding projectile. On this day, with the reporter present, the whalers were sure they would return to the little bay at Pigeon Point with a whale in tow.

But the truth was that whaling was on its way out. It had seen its day. Observers up and down the California coast didn’t hide the fact that the number of whales were decreasing, less every year, they said.

There were estimates that 20 years earlier, in the 1850s, thousands of whales headed south daily between Christmas and the first of February, the time they were easily caught. The success of “shore whaling,” and the accompanying equipment, was said to have helped decimate the numbers of whales which would ultimately put the whalers out of business as well.

A whale that escaped, and survived, seemed to learn from the bad experience, and avoided the shoreline, remaining ten miles or more from the long boats. That made capture trickier. The whalers complained about the difficulty; the only piece of equipment that made the work worthwhile was Greener’s harpoon gun which could travel a great distance. But the writing was on the wall.

The whalers also noticed the decline in the numbers of the California Gray whale. Humpbacks accounted for the largest number captured, and some believed the Gray whale was actually nearing extinction.

History says that those whalers who discovered the California Gray’s breeding grounds in the southern lagoons near Baja California rapidly exploited their find. Here in the delicious waters where the cows nursed their calves, hunters trapped them. Without their mothers, the calves rarely survived, and that is probably why they decreased in number.

Meanwhile at Pigeon Point the intrepid whalers scanned the surrounding sea for a spout. Without warning, one of the hunters called out: “There she blows.”

That was the signal for the long boats to sail off in the direction of the whale. Carefully approaching the target, the whalers peaked their oars, propelling their boats with paddles to refrain from arousing the anger of an unsuspecting male.

They worried about an injured whale turning on them. At the San Simeon Whaling Station, hunters were reputed to have shot 25 bomb lances and several harpoons in to a “right whale” (worth $4000 in oil and whale bone.) But this huge whale survived the multiple hits, smashing one of the boats to pieces, forcing the men to give up the chase.

Often, even if a whale was killed, it sank and could not be retrieved.

One year when the men at Pigeon Point cut up a dozen whales, 10 others slipped away from them. On this day, with the reporter present, the whalers swore success. To show their serious, four men waited on the shore at their station to extract oil from the heaps of blubber.

On the opposite side of Pigeon Point, the “try pots” heated by crude furnaces, formed of rocks and clay, stood ready to boil the blubber into oil. Visitors found it difficult to believe that the foul smelling fluid, which very often dripped down the cliffs to the water’s edge, actually produced soap and oil for lanterns.

The whalers also cleaned and dried the whale bone which they said sold for $.07 per pound in San Francisco. They added that this barely paid for the labor and trouble of saving the bone.

The Pigeon Point whalers said that low prices for oil barely covered their rising marketing and storage costs. In San Francisco whale oil was at that time selling for $.30 per gallon—while the “oil casks” alone cost $.06 per gallon. In more “normal” times, the price of whale oil varied between $.35 and $.50 per gallon, and when the price fell ten cents, the business wasn’t even worth it. Profits at Pigeon Point were marginal.

Worse yet, the Pigeon Point whalers claimed they had been swindled by a New York-based company. According to their story, they shipped 600 barrels of oil back East, after being promised the highest prices, which, in the end they did not get. They had been too trusting and the market turned on them. Now they were falling in debt.

Meanwhile out at sea, the whalers were tracking the spot where the spout had been sighted. It was a humpback. When they were 40 years from their prey, one of the whalers aimed the harpoon gun, shooting him in a vulnerable spot. Down went the large whale, with the cord of the harpoon still attached, and while trying to avoid capture, smashed the waves about but the struggle for life was about to be lost. When the injured whale rose to breathe, a $4.00 bomb lance was fired into the mammal’s head, ending its life.

Fatally wounded, the whale rolled over to one side.

Upon towing the dead whale to the shore station, the whalers congratulated themselves on a job well done—especially because this particular whale exhibited many scars from other attempts to capture him with a harpoon.

Although most folks were still burning whale oil, since 1850 petroleum had been gaining prominence for illumination and lubrication. Obviously, the discovery of petroleum eventually led to the end of the whalers and the shore station at Pigeon Point.

[Note:  Colonel Albert S. Evans, the author of A La California (1872), was a close friend of  New York Herald publisher Horace Greeley, famous for his "Go West, young man" declaration.  What was Colonel Evans doing, exploring California, to the north and south? Was A La California a kind of 19th century "Guide to the Golden State?" --June]

Story/Photos by John Vonderlin

Email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,

I mentioned that the sand bar blocking Pescadero Creek’s flow into the ocean was recently breached in my posting about our investigation of the alleged proposed loop route of the Ocean Shore Railroad. I was amused to learn yesterday that a couple, apparently hoping to watch the event unfold, had been stranded on a rock at the creek’s mouth, when the rapidity of the process once it began caught them by surprise. An expensive and embarrassing helicopter rescue was effected, with no loss of life.

The following story, extracted from “A La California,” an 1873 book by Albert S. Evans, deals perhaps with those same rocks, but is not as bloodlesss for all concerned. There are enough politically incorrect aspects in this story to offend a great number of people, but I would urge you to judge the author as a man of his times, not today. As a former fisherman, I can’t help but wish I could have experienced those times and their amazing abundance, even while I know the careless, even callous, behavior of sportsmen of the time is what helped produce today’s degraded situation.
*****
“Pescadero” is the Spanish for “fishery,” and the name is indicative. The creeks that come down from the mountains all along this coast swarm with the spotted trout of California, and afford fine sport in the early part of the season. In places along their banks, the honeysuckle bushes and other shrubs and vines form a chaparral that you must wade through for miles to whip the stream; but one hundred, two hundred, even three hundred trout are often basketed in a single day’s fishing by one individual. It does not rain here from April to the last day of November or December; but as the days grow shorter, and the sun’s rays less powerful, the evaporation that causes the streams to dwindle to mere strings of detached ponds decreases, and all over the State, especially in the Coast Range, the streams begin to rise. Thompson, an hospitable landlord, took me down to the mouth of the Pescadero for a little sport. We sent a Mexican after worms for bait. the Mexican sent a negro, and we sent a Chinaman after the negro, and got them all back at last.

The row down the creek was short. We saw hundreds of mallards and teals, which we could not shoot for the law forbids it–very properly–until the fifteenth of the month, and large flocks of long-billed curlew and other birds, such as crows, buzzards, gulls, etc. etc., that we did not want to kill. There is a bar at the mouth of the creek and we chained our boat to a high rock inside it and walked down to the ocean. The shores were lined with drift, great trunks of pine and redwood trees, timbers of wrecked ships, etc., etc., and the scene was wildly romantic. We passed the festering carcasses of half a dozen great sea -lions, which had been killed by a fishing party with Henry rifles some weeks before. The fish come in the creek with the tide, and bite best before the tides commences. If the sea lions who cover the rocks just outside, follow them in the creek, the fish all run out–and there is no more sport that day. So the fisherman shoot some of the sea-lions and the rest leave. Before we reached the mouth we saw two wolves on the opposite shore near the breakers playing like dogs. One ran off when he saw us and the other raised his nose and voice, and treated us to the most vivid illustration imaginable of:

“The lone wolf’s howl on the Onalaska shore,” and then followed his companion. As we rounded the bluffs we saw some rocks covered with sea-lions. It was low tide and we could run out to within fifty yards of them. I had a large-sized Smith and Wesson, a capital weapon for such use. I sent a bullet into the side of a big fellow who was lying high up and presented a good mark. The ball struck him with a dull thud, and as he rolled into the waves the whole herd went splashing after him. Half a dozen of them swam down in a line twenty or thirty yards of us, and looked at us with their great lustrous brown eyes, whether with anger or sorrow we could not tell, until I hit one on the head, and as the bullet glanced off, he disappeared with a grunt and a porpoise-like dive. Thompson took the pistol, and when one rose again he fired and hit it squarely in the mouth. He shook his head from side to side, as if blind with pain, then went down, leaving great dark spots in the water. They all started then off southward, and I was not sorry. Inveterate sportsman that I have been from my youth up, I cannot get over the feeling that killing defenseless creatures like these, and allowing their bodies to rot on the beach, is something akin to murder.

“The rocks we stood on, and which are covered at high tide, were incrusted with mussels of immense size. Some of them measure twelve inches in length, and Thompson tells me he has seen them fifteen inches long. They are fat and luscious, and some epicures come down to the coast every season to indulge in clam-bakes and mussel-roasts; but this species of shell-fish is so common, and consequently cheap, that not one in ten of the people of the State of California have eaten them. In holes in the rocks, filled with pure sea-water, we saw curious things like sunflowers, with bright green petals. These we could not detach from the rocks, and at one touch they curled up into a slippery ball with all the petals inside.

“We went back to our boat as the tide came booming in, and prepared to fish for salmon-trout as they are called; really they are yearling and two year old salmon. They will bite at a worm, spoon, or fly, but best at worms. I had hardly put in my hook when a noble fellow made the line fairly hiss through the water for a few minutes. Then we drew him in, panting and exhausted with his struggles, alongside the rocks, and then with a landing net got him in the boat. He was twenty inches in length and the handsomest fish I’ve ever caught. Eight and ten pounders are common, and they are the most delicious fish for frying and broiling which ever swam the sea. Great crabs came in with the tide and we dipped several of them out with our net. In two hours we corralled fourteen of the salmon-trout, losing several more because of broken hooks, and then, the slack-water coming on, and the fish ceasing to bite with avidity, hoisted sail and went gliding swiftly upstream to the hotel. It was, all in all, the best morning’s sport I’ve ever enjoyed in my life. and I have shot and fished from the Red River in the north to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

I’ve attached before and after stream breach photos of the creek’s mouth and the lagoon behind the bridge. I believe the rock shown at the mouth of the stream in the after pictures is the one the couple was standing on.

Check that same rock, just barely sticking above the sand, in the before photo. It must have been a harrowing time for the couple until the helicopter arrived.

A cheap and instructive lesson for others would are incautious in their desire to observe the power of Nature up close. Enjoy. John

Story by June Morrall

In the 1860s Colonel Albert S. Evans, author of A La California: Sketches of Life in the Golden State, reported on a very, very interesting dispute between an Indian and a Spaniard in Pescadero.

At the root of the never-ending argument: Who arrived first in Pescadero? Don Felipe Armas…..or……Don Salvador Mosquito. Which one?

As with any disagreement, there are two sides, two versions–two people who may not like each other–and each one is highly convinced that the other one is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Don Felipe Armas’ Story:

I am a native Californian of Spanish parentage. I remember when King Kamehameha I put a call out for vaqueros to come to the Hawaiian Islands and kill off the wild cattle that were wreaking havoc. I was 35 years old when the King himself selected me.

Don Salvador Mosquitos’ Story:

I am a surviving Mission Indian and I remember when the padres tried to convert the natives to Christianity. I rebelled and became a member of the great renegrade Indian Pomponio’s tribe. There were only 50 of us left when Pomponio set up headquarters in the redwoods east of Pescadero. From our secret mountain perch, Pomponio led us on raids of well stocked ranches nearby, and as far away as Santa Clara and San Jose.

The fathers at Mission Santa Clara were furious because we stole food as well as their fine horses. They made a plan to destroy Pomponio. They captured all the female Indians, forcing Pomponio to risk his life by riding with his men into the mission to free the women. We all got away but were followed by the mission’s army into the mountains where there was a bloody fight that escalated into a slaughter leaving only me alive because I was too young to be killed.

Further complicating the matter between Armas and Mosquito’s claim, said Colonel Albert Evans, was the testimony of pioneer Alexander Moore. In the 1890s, he boasted: “I was the first settler in Pescadero and the only one left.”

Alexander Moore built the first frame house in Pescadero in 1853. Six years earlier, Moore, who was then 27, and his pregnant bride, crossed the plains from Missouri to California in a wagon pulled by oxen.

When the six month journey ended in 1847, the Moores first settled in Santa Cruz and became the parents of sons Eli and Bill.

Not yet convinced that he had found the perfect spot to settle, Alexander Moore often scouted the unfenced coastline north of Santa Cruz on a mule. He was looking for possible shipping points and news of shipwrecks; salvaging both the ship and its cargo was an excellent source of income in those days.

Two years later, about 1849, the Moores had found Pescadero to their liking, building the house with lumber hauled by oxen from Santa Cruz. He also helped build Pescadero’s first schoolhouse, hiring a teacher with his own money. By the 1890s Moore knew he had made the right decisions: he had been a county supervisor and was the owner of 700 acres.
When in San Francisco, Alexander Moore boarded his horse at future Pescadero landowner Loren Coburn’s stable.

Considered an oldtimer in Pescadero he was often asked: “How many people lived in Pescadero when you got here?”

Alexander Moore: Well, I will approximate it. Maybe there was a dozen.”

[I wrote this in 2003.]

When Colonel Albert S. Evans learned that the Steele Brothers Dair at Ano Nuevo had produced a huge two-ton cheese in the 1860s, the author insisted on meeting Rensselaer Steele, owner of the famous Cascade Dairy Ranch.

The Colonel, who worked for the New York Tribune, often galloped atop his trusty old steed Don Benito to the scene of a news story. He was a rugged, experienced outdoorsman, avid fisherman and hunter, who, for protection against critters–wild or human–carried a Smith and Wesson revolver.

In 1869 it was Colonel Evans’ goal to collect anecdotes for a book that he hoped would illuminate the unique character of the rapidly vanishing “early Californian.” The book would be published as “A La California: Sketches of Life in the Golden State.”

Colonel Evans’ writing adventure began in San Francisco. From there he turned his attention southward to the San Mateo County Coastside–where he visited Pescadero, population 300. Pescadero’s local economy depended on the success of the nearby sawmills, dairies, grain and potato ranches. The lumber, butter, cheese and vegetables were sold at the bustling farmer’s market in San Francisco.

With popular little Pebble Beach a stone’s throw from Pescadero, there was also a growing summer tourist trade.

Around and about Pescadero, no newcomer was ever spared the horrific tales of injuries inflicted by the local grizzly bears and Colonel Evans got his earful.

Evans also became fascinated with the saga of two stubborn local men, each claiming that he was the title of Pescadero’s first settler. Don Salvador Mosquito, reportedly a former member of the Indian outlaw Pomponio’s gang, insisted he came first. His competitor, the Spaniard Senor Felipe Armas, argued that he came first.

While the contentious pair could never resolve their disagreement, Colonel Evans turned out to be the winner–because he walked away with the unique anecdote for his book.

Like all the tourists, Evans boarded at the famous Swanton House. His host was a talkative character called Thompson who had an encyclopedia knowledge of the local shipwrecks, including the Carrier Pigeon, Coya, Hellespont and the Sir John Franklin. More great details for the Colonel’s book.

Read the rest of this entry »