Pescadero Memories

John Vonderlin (JV): Last year while searching for the WWII observation tunnel the Pranksters were “trapped” in during the Good Friday Earthquake’s tsunami in 1964, I found the Graffitti Grotto, a sea cave, where Zane had carved his initials decades ago and informed him of its location. He gave me a dozen exclamation points, excited to be able to share a nearly forgotten part of his youth with his son someday. I bet he knows what became of the film.

Russell Towle (RT): Zane Kesey sounds like maybe the best bet. I haven’t contacted him directly, not at all.

JV:   Are you aware of the details of the “acquisition” of the land for the park by eminent domain? Was Stuart’s homebuilt house really destroyed after acquisition? Did the floating “island” sink in the lake or was it
disassembled? Do you know the last chapter of your driftwod home?

RT: It was not acquired by eminent domain; Janet and Merrill merely got tired of living so very remotely, tired of the eternal wind. They sold to the State Park. The floating greenhouse, well, I personally disassembled it and hauled it piece by piece up to Janet and Merrill’s new place on Pescadero Road, in 1977, I think. I think we let the old iron pipes sink into the reservoir, but everything else came out.

The driftwood cabin was clearly going to be swept out to sea, so, with Janet and Merrill’s permission, I decided to relocate it farther back in the dunes. I got about twelve people together and we were able to lift it up and carry it uphill, about twenty yards back in the dunes, where I had prepared a new spot for it. Then I decided to make it much nicer. I would attach an octagonal room to one end. I would put in curved rafters. This and that. It was already up on a pole foundation I had made, from tree trunks which had washed up on the beach. So I put a lot of work into a too-ambitious project and lived during that time in the Big House, then under construction. During the winter of 1971-72 some Boy Scouts who were camped on Cascade Ranch land, nearly a mile north, walked down and completely destroyed the cabin, and threw my tools all over the dunes, and stole my tools. I was able totrack them right back to their camp, where the adults took a haughty attitude, “Well, your residence is illegal, anyway.” True enough. There was no putting Humpty Dumpty together again.

JV:  There is a new $3 million Interpretive Center that just opened at Ano Nuevo in the old Steele dairy buildings. One of the buildings has rough hewn monster timbers that a placard says were recovered from a defunct local wharf. I’m assuming that was the Waddell Wharf that had carried lumber to waiting ships in the late 1800s.  Do you think your timber was also from that source? Do you have pictures of it?

RT: But how were these timbers stored, after removal from the wharf? I don’t remember a wharf at Waddell. There was one at Davenport. My timbers are mostly short, six or eight feet, they were just what was left after bulldozing and burning a barn. They are redwood and still show adze and broad-axe marks. One had an interesting carving of a human head in profile, but it has weathered away.


JV:   Meg, has been doing the Beach Watch survey from south of New Year’s Creek to the county line for several years, so I have become relatively familiar with some of the areas you referred to. I think your driftwood house was in what we call “The Forbidden Zone.”  While I need a good reason to ignore the signs, I have hiked along that beach a few times to “clean” it of  buoys, ropes, nets,  tires or any other flotsam treasure I might care to carry the long way out to Highway 1. I’ve got numerous pictures of the area I’ll email if you want to take a walk down Memory Lane.

RT: Isn’t the county line right there near the south side of Año Nuevo? I was way around the point to the north. Janet and Merrill’s Big House is now a ranger residence. I stopped in for a visit last year. They do
not allow public access into the park from that end of things.

JV:   I’m assuming with a couple of years “on the frontline” you were able to observe Neptune’s rhythms intimately as far as flotsam is concerned. Your “calling” of beach treasures made me chuckle. After four years of collecting, photographing, cleaning, and sorting tens of thousands of pieces of marine debris I have come to believe through my observations that there are funny things going on in the offshore area that manifest themselves in almost magical ways on the beach. To look for a killer whale tooth in the same place you found one previously is not that illogical. Lightning often strikes in the same spot for reasons we often can only guess at.  For instance, about a mile north of the Point is a minor vomitorium that occasionally kicks up non-buoyant marine debris en masse. Socks, sometimes as many as 40 at a time, show up there episodically, associated with the piling of wrack on the beach.  Do you remember anything odd like that in that general area in the 70s?  Did Stuart have favorite places to collect the debris he used in many of his pieces?

RT: This vomitorium would be in the little rock outcrop at the north end of our beach. Just north, yards north, of that little outcrop, is where I found my whale tooth. In those rocks were exposed whale bone
fossils, but of a lesser quality and lesser degree of fossilization than the agatized pieces we would find loose on the beach. There were other places on the Point where the soft Pliocene siltstones carried whale fossils.

You have no doubt observed that in winter, the sand gets stripped off that beach, Janet and Merrill’s beach, and the soft clays of the uplifted marine terrace are exposed, along with large masses of rounded boulders. We were conneisseurs of flotsam and jetsam, and Merrill was King so far as finding the oddest rarest things. Every day he would walk the beach slowly. He found many, many agatized whale rib fragments and vertebrae. He found quite a few Japanese fishing floats. In my years there I only found one glass float.

The patterns are definitely interesting, by which such debris is washed up.

You will know that the North Pacific Whorl or whatever it is called, from more or less permanent high pressure over the Pacific north of ~latitude 30 degrees N, causes clockwise rotation which sends things
from Japan to California via Alaska, more or less.

Was it Alexander Von Humboldt who observed Chinese junks stuck in the mud at the mouth of the Columbia River? At any rate, they were there courtesy of the Whorl.

That is, currents sweep the California coast from north to south, or northwest to southeast, to be precise.

They are driven by, and accompanied by, the almost constant northwest winds.

OK. Those winds actually sweep off warmer surface water and allow colder bottom water to well up to the surface. Hence, in part, the fog. The air is chilled below the dew point by the cold upwelling waters.

So, knowing that so far as winds and currents go, we can label every promontory with a windward side, and a lee side, what should we expect?

It is not an easy question to resolve, since the calmer waters on the lee, south sides of promontories, might well trap things.

For instance, the gold miners in the Sierra quickly found out, back in 1848 and 1849, that they should look on the *inside* of river bends, not the outside. The inside is where slightly calmer and slower waters
allow gold and all manner of sediments to drop, to stop. The inside of bends is where the “bars’ of the 49ers are found.

So after a fashion we might identify the lee sides of promontories with the insides of river bends. It is a little bit of a forced analogy but to me it makes some sense. Certainly at Año Nueov in partocular the north side, the windward side, is eroding under wave attack much much, much faster than the south side. Similarly, in our Sierra rivers, in their deep canyons, the outsides of the bends, where the water flows fast and furious, are activiely “degrading” or being eroded, while the insides of these same bends are “aggrading,” that is, more stuff added, than stuff taken away.

But in support of the idea that the northern, windward, current-ward sides of points and promontories actually collect more debris, I have heard that that huge hook of land jutting far west into the Pacific, from north-central Baja California, right by Scammon’s Lagoon, is the best driftwood, flotsam and jetsam, and old shipwreck beach on the entire Pacific coast of North America.

I have heard, but not seen for myself.

JV:   I was just looking at some 1972 aerial pictures of that area and I saw about a hundred artifacts in the blurry pictures that could have been your cabin or Bigfoot’s or Pete’s. Can you help me locate where they were? Are you familiar with the California Coastal Records Project? If you go to their website  http://www.californiacoastline.org/ and search for image #6376 you’ll get a 2002 photo of Point Ano Nuevo. By hitting the “NorthWest 1″ button you’ll move up the coast. When you find the photo that captures about where your cabin was, you can hit the Time Comparison button. That gives you all the photos from different time series of that same area. The photos are from 72, 79, 87, 2002, 4, and 5. By double clicking the photos you get the largest file for that shot. Unfortunately, the 72 and 79 photos are not of the quality of the later ones, especially the ones from 2002 and later, taken by the Adelmans. Can you see any of the homebuilt structures in the pictures?

RT: I do not have broadband. I can put dots on the map. I’ll see what I can come up with.


JV:   I’ve got many more questions about some of the things you mentioned, but I’m running down here at the end of a hard day so I’ll close. Hope to hear from you. Thanks for sharing. And congratulations on the impressive online presence you’ve created with your blog, photos, etc. Enjoy. John Vonderlin

RT: Thanks John. It sounds as though you have developed quite an intimate acquaintance with that area. More than mere acquaintance. I’d suppose very few people know it as well. It is a very special place.

Russell Towle

Email John: (benloudman@sbcglobal. net)

Email Russell (russelltowle@gmail.com)

Story & Photos by John Vonderlin

Email John: benloudman@sbcglobal.net

Hi June,

Thanks for the Squid story link. I had seen a short video with people gah-gahing at the gooey mess of tentacles, but didn’t know all the details. I recently found a great specimen of what I call an assemblage. While washing and cleaning it I decided to rename it and its ugly brethren, “squids.”  A “squid” is a mass of entangled fishing line, rope, netting, and anything else Neptune chooses to entangle in his ugly creation. Check the attached pictures and you can see why I renamed them. I’m sure the serious assemblage artists are thankful for that.

Story & photos by John Vonderlin

Email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,

Some time ago I posted a story*** about what I consider the most viewed Sea Arch on the San Mateo coast.

I maintained that this arch was the one on the promontory that forms the southern bank of Pescadero Creek where it flows into the ocean. There was some mention by someone that the arch was actually “a hand dug tunnel.” Curious, I went to look for myself, checked it out, took a lot of photographs and opined that it wasn’t regular enough to be manmade.

Besides why would somebody go to the trouble of digging a seemingly pointless tunnel?

Well, last week I was showing my neighbor the California Coastal Records Project (CCRP) website. I was demonstrating the Time Comparison feature when he commented that he and his high school buddies used to party at the beach pictured on the screen. They knew it as “Hole in the Wall Beach.”

That Hole in the Wall is none other then the sea arch opening? tunnel? at Pescadero Beach. Only my neighbor informed me that he was sure it was a tunnel because in the Seventies the sides were much more regular, demonstrating its manmade origin.

While I’m not one to question the hazy, thirty five- year- old memories of a drunken youth, I was still having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of somebody going to the trouble of digging a tunnel in that spot.

A few days ago while reading the transcript of a  “Pescadero Oral History Project” interview with Ron Duarte, the owner of historic Duarte’s in Pescadero,  I got my answer. Sort of.

“A bunch of old timers made that tunnel,” said Ron. “ It is not natural. Everybody thinks it is natural but it is not. They thought that was going to keep the mouth of the creek open. Maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. But, most of the time I don’t think it did much good. That was man-made, that tunnel.”

In another interview, also on the Pescadero Oral History CD, Marty McCormick was asked the same question.

Interviewer: Do you remember the tunnel at the mouth of the creek?

Marty McCormick: Out by the beach. Oh, yeah. It is still there. We used to crawl through there. There were some years where it was totally filled in with rock and then there were other years when you could go through there without having to do a belly crawl. I have pictures of my kids inside when they were pretty young—twenty-five, thirty years ago.

They’ve convinced me.  It’s a tunnel. The battering surf has naturalized the opening over the decades.  And while, to me, it seems obvious that a tunnel is as likely to sand up as the creek mouth itself, somebody, a long time ago, thought excavating one was a good enough idea to invest a lot of hard work. At least they’ve left us a durable monument to the futility of trying to make Mother Nature do our bidding.

I guess it’s also Sea Arches Minus 1, Beach Tunnels Plus One and Oldtimers 1, Young Whippersnapper 0. Enjoy. John

***

This was the main posting I did about what I thought was a Sea Arch at Pescadero Beach. I’m going to revisit it and see if there is any sign still left of its manmade origin. Enjoy. John

Re: Pescadero’s Pride & Joy

Photos by John Vonderlin (read his story in the post below)
Email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

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

Hi June,

My tire gathering expedition to Tunitas Beach was a limited success.

I got a slow start carrying them up the hill because I had to round up all the ones that had been rolled from my stockpile down onto the beach for use as chairs or left there to be redistributed by the tide.

And then all the recent traffic up and down the hill has loosened so much dirt that the path was practically lubricated by it. Carrying two tires at once made it a “two steps forward, one step back circumstance” in a number of the steeper spots. Worst of all, Mother Nature was uncooperative and delivered one of the hottest days at the beach I can remember. Not the ideal day to be toting tires up a steep, sun-drenched hill.

Still, I was able to add six more tires to my previous total of sixty six, making seventy two my new plateau. I’m hoping the next 29 come a little easier though. Enjoy. John

101 Tires

Story & photos by John Vonderlin

email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,

Here’s a common experience for folks that dine out regularly. By accident you discover that special unknown little restaurant with outrageously good food. You soon return to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, are delighted again, and then full of pride at your discovery, you excitedly relate its gastronomic wonders to a few special friends The word spreads like wildfire and you soon have the circumstance captured so perfectly by the Yogi-ism that, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

Well, it was while working on my “101 Tires” artplay project that I encountered a reverse sort of situation. The project, where I ended up photographing 101 tires on our beautiful beaches, then removing them for disposal, was proceeding along nicely. I was finding them in the most beautiful places on our coast and getting some great pictures and lots of exercise toting and trucking them to the nearest disposal site.

Then I discovered Tunitas Beach was the Mother Lode of stranded tires.

I got some great photos of tires scarring the foreground with the spacious sandy beach and awesome, sheer cliffs looming in the background. Since I didn’t want to take too many of my photos from one place, I stopped photographing them there, but ended up gathering over fifty more tires anyway, hauling them above the reach of the tide. While this added success to one aspect of the project, that being to remove these eyesores from our beaches, it unfortunately, cut off the flow of tires down the coast to the spots where it isn’t necessary to climb a long, steep hill to gather them.

Worse yet, my main stash is still there and barbarians are rolling them out onto the beach to sit on around smouldering garbage fires while they get drunk, then leave them there, and this has required me to re-gather a number of them on several occasions.

Well, a few days ago Meg, informed me that for one day, on June 21st, the Pescadero Landfill, will give a $7 fee amnesty to anyone bringing in tires. With that kind of incentive, this next week, I’m going to see how many I can carry up the hill in a few hours. I’ve always wondered if I look like what I feel like when I reach the top of that monstrous slope carrying a couple of tires. With Meg’s help I hope to share that.

I’ve attached pictures of my last addition to my photo collection that was spit out at Neptune’s Vomitorium, way back on April 6th. Enjoy. John

P.S. I don’t have a proprietary interest in the tires left at Tunitas, so if anyone wants to raid my stash, feel free. Especially, that 100-pound truck tire.

If I were lost on the South Coast, I would want to be with John Vonderlin!

The Missing Tunnel

By John Vonderlin

Email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,

Some time ago I posted about my search for a mysterious tunnel just up the hill from the north parking lot at Pescadero Beach. Several oldtimers talked of visiting it in their youth and related its possible function. Despite clear directions I had been unable to find it.

Then by examining the 1972 pictures on California Coastal Records Project (CCR), I was able to see a path to an area that corresponding to the alleged location. Walking around the area, I found a now barely visible, slanted, ledge-like feature up the slope to a slight anomaly in the hillside that I assumed had been a graded dirt road leading to where the mystery tunnel had been.

When one of your readers, Bobbi Pimentel, read that posting, she contacted me, and in an email, validated my theory and provided other interesting information.

Bobbi, a member of one of Pescadero’s oldest families, remembered visiting the tunnel as a child with her father after WWII.

She helped me solve the mystery of the tunnel. Now maybe someone will come forward with a photo of it before it was filled, and/or provide firsthand information on the other two cliffside tunnels just north of there. Then my curiosity about the tunnels will be fully satisfied.

Here’s an excerpt from my email to Mrs. Pimentel and her reply. The only thing better then mysteries is solving them. Thanks to both of you for helping me in finding the answers to this one. Enjoy. John

John Vonderlin (JV): Were you in the tunnel just up the hill from what is now the parking lot of north Pescadero Beach? Was it where I thought? Do remember how deep it was? The longest serving ranger in the area (about 25 years) knew nothing of it. He was familiar with the next one north. That’s the one I climbed in, the one in a cliff face above the ocean. The other cliff face observation tunnel I’ve written about, the one the Pranksters were in, just north of Pomponio, was well visited until the 1970s when it was plugged and filled for safety reasons apparently.

Bobbi Pimentel (BP): Yes, the cave that I remember most is the one above the parking lot…It has brush and weeds growing so thickly around it that for several years, it looked unaccessible. Since I was so young when Dad took me to these places, I really can’t judge length, but a guesstimate would be 40′…the brush on the ocean side kept the tunnel out of view. It was rumored that Japanese subs were traveling the coast. There were guns and ammunition stored there as well as dynamite. (My Dad worked on the road department during the war, worked for the Federal Government (as a maintenance man) and did some other work for them…he used explosives on a regular basis. He went into farming for a few years and in the early ’50’s worked for the County of San Mateo where he was using explosives again…

Story & Photos by John Vonderlin

email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

Hi June,

Yesterday Meg and I went to the brand new Interpretive Center’s Grand Opening at Ano Nuevo State Park. This over 3- million dollar addition to the state park was constructed in the old buildings of “The Steele Dairy,” on Point Ano Nuevo.

The old cow barn holds the Marine Education Center.

The horse barn

holds a theatre and classroom and the two- story creamery has been converted into the headquarters for the hundreds of volunteers and the park office.

There is a Gift Shop where you can buy books (including one of yours, “The Coburn Mystery,”

souvenirs, posters, etc.

There are interpretive displays inside and picnic tables outside with a to-kill-for view of Ano Nuevo Island from this historic point.

Best of all (in my mind) there is a warm, sheltered spot to gather in this often windy and cold spot, while you wait for your docent-guided tour to see the Elephant Seal’s rookery further out the point.

When you’re poking around in the barns note the giant weathered timbers used to construct them. A sign mentions they were salvaged from a storm-wrecked local wharf.

I assume that is none other then the Waddell Wharf I’ve written about before. I recommend you check out this valuable addition to our understanding of the historic south coast of San Mateo County. Enjoy. John

Read the rest of this entry »

Story & Photo by John Vonderlin

Email John (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

“The Story of an Old Bottle found in the Gazos” by John Vonderlin

Hi June,

One of the more interesting things Meg and I found during our exploration of the Gazos Creek watershed yesterday was this old bottle.

Because of its location I assume somebody had found it while bushwhacking and abandoned it because it was broken. Being more interested in cleaning up litter then collecting antique bottles, I packed it out.

Doing a little Internet research, I discovered it was a pre-Prohibition beer bottle made by the William Franzen and Son bottling company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its cachet for me is that it was possibly drunk in the heyday of logging in the Gazos Country in the early 1900s by one of the characters in Edward Conant’s or Harvey Mowry’s, books that I’ve mentioned previously.

The following article was first published in its entirety in February,1997 as part of the book: “The Milwaukee Antique Bottle & Advertising Club: The Cream City Courier - A Special 25th Anniversary Issue” compiled & edited by Michael R. Reilly, then, Editor of The Cream City Courier. The book was privately published by Mr. Reilly.

Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Reilly’s book about the W.F. & S Bottling Co.:

“In 1900 Franzen became owner, reincorporated, and placed his own mark on the bottles. Things were at a low ebb when Franzen took over but by 1898 the capital stock had risen in value from $10,000 to $100,000 and by 1900, thanks to the use of a tank furnace and semi-automatic machines, to $300,000. Use of a higher percentage of cullet in the batch aided in partial reduction of operating costs. Bottle quality was good, and the factory’s most important customers, the Milwaukee brewers, had reentered the fold.

“Prohibition brought about its downfall, but for awhile the reversals suffered were met with bottles for makers of “near beer” and soft drinks. Noyes states that the corporation was dissolved on December 24, 1921 by a vote of six hundred shares of stock in favor and none against, but the City Directory reports it active under O.E. Koehler in 1923 and idle in 1926, never to reopen.”

Enjoy. John

In an email to John Vonderlin (benloudman@sbcglobal.net), Bobbi Ballard Pimental said:

Hello John,

I’m Bobbi Ballard Pimentel and have just read a small portion of your story about he tunnels around Pescadero Beach. Don’t know if you have learned anything since you wrote the article, but I have been in that tunnel as well as several others along the coastside.

My Dad, Robert (Bob) Ballard was born in Pescadero along with 11 other brothers and sisters….he took me to the tunnels on several occasions and told me that they were used to store guns and ammunition during the war. He helped ‘build’ them. I do not recall where the others were although I do remember that they were mostly on the water’s edge, but there were tunnels and observations points high above Gazos Creek…there was a military facility there too. That, my husband and I discovered in the early ’60’s that there is (or was ) a missile base in the Santa Cruz Mountains…we found it by accident while on a Sunday drive with our first child…Dad had a lot of memorabilia that he received from the military personnel stationed in the Pescadero area…When the troops left the area (I was very young at the time..(born 6/6/42)…they left a Springer Spaniel dog behind…he became my pet…Billy. Dad told me that Billy was a horse, so I rode him like a horse when I was about 2…..Crazy!

There are fewer and fewer people in the Pescadero area who would remember any of the history of the Coastside. Hope you can get your answers.

I am a native of Pescadero and now live in Whitmore, Ca. (East of Redding). Some of my family are still in Pescadero though…on my Mother’s side…Arcangeli Grocery/Norm’s Market, owned by my Brother Norm Benedetti,

My Grandfather Sante Arcangeli built the grocery store in 1929. He died in the late ’30’s….before I was born.

When the war started, my Mother, Louise Arcangeli Benedetti and Uncle Mario (Fred) were running the store. Uncle Fred went off to war and Mom ran the store alone for a while…she married my Dad in 1940, got pregnant with me and in 1942 she sold the store to Bob Wilson.

When Uncle Fred returned from the war, he took the store back again…Bob and Saretta Wilson had 3 children, Bobby, Shirley and Rita..Shirley married my Brother, Norm Benedetti and two of their boys (Mike and Don) are currently running the store.

In 1948 Mom built Ballard’s Dept. Store, just across the street from Duarte’s. My Dad and his 11 brothers and sisters were all born in Pescadero..most on the Willowside Farm on Stage Road.

Just some local trivia…I have more. But enough for now.

(Image: The Willowside Farm)

J
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