Pescadero Memories

Loren Coburn and Joe Levy had been feuding for a decade. During the 1880s, Levy and his brothrs, Armand and Fernand, had opened a general store in the old, two-story McCormick building, near the Swanton House, once a quaint hotel where Pebble Beach-bound guests often stayed overnight.

Not only did the Levy Brothers sell soft goods and hardware at the Pescadero location but there was a drug store, a Wells Fargo station, Western Union agency and a U.S. Post Office under the one roof. In 1885 Joe Levy was appointed the postmaster.

The warrant for Levy’s arrest was telegraphed to his Pescadero store. Before pleading, he was released on his own recognizance.

Joe Levy’s defense at the jury trial centered on the fact that people had traveled over the Pebble Beach’s cow trail for 20 years., conferring upon it the legal status of a public road. By locking the gate, Loren Coburn had obstructed and denied the public’s right to use the road. Levy contended that unlocking the gate amounted to appropriate legal action.

Following a tense trial, the jury agreed.

The local press reported that Pescadero residents traveled across the squiggly cow trail to Pebble beach where they held “mammoth picnics and seaside banquets” to celebrate Levy’s victory.

The verdict intensified competition between the millionaire landowner and the popular businessman. When Coburn launched the People’s Stage Lind, a new stagecoach business covering the San Mateo-Half Moon Bay-Pescadero route, Levy countered with a rival line, setting off a cutthroat fare war.

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Pebble Beach, a contrast of stark, moonscape-like rock formations, peaceful tidepools and nature’s amazing cache of colorful, smooth stones, lies between the village of Pescadero and the Pigeon Point lighthouse.

More than one hundred years ago Pescadero was a remote seaside resort. It was nearby Pebble Beach’s originality that lured the stagecoach riding tourists to its unique shores. San Francisco visitors came for the pleasure of carrying away the multi-colored pebbles that were often fashioned into pendants and earrings.

A hated millionaire landowner’s efforts to bar the public from the beach by erecting a fence and a locked gate ignited a “war” that began at high noon on a Saturday in September 1891.

Organized by respected Pescadero businessman Joe Levy, a dozen horse-drawn buggies and wagons caravaned over the crooked cow trail leading from Pescadero to Pebble Beach. In the lead wagon sat San Mateo County Supervisor Henry Adair and County Roadmaster Charles Pinkham. Riding in a buggy behind the officials was a man holding a homemade, straw-filled effigy of then 65-year-old Loren Coburn.

A tall, spare man, it was Coburn who was the hated millionaire; it was Coburn who owned 10,000-acres surrounding Pescadero, including the local’s beloved Pebble Beach.

Adair and Pinkham, flanked by two assistants, walked toward Coburn’s heavily barricaded gate, disappointed that their adversary was absent. They still held Loren Coburn responsible for a popular Pigeon Point wharf employee’s murder in a violent shootout 20 years earlier, and angrily swung Coburn’s effigy in the air.

The mood was one of vengeance as Pinkham sized up the pine bridge planks, fastened with long wire spikers, that sealed the entrance. Methodically, the roadmaster slashed away at the offensive chains and padlocks and the gate opened.

Whooping and shouting triumphantly, the men rushed through the gateway to the beach of pebbles, claiming victory for their cause in the first skirmish of what the local press dubbed the “Pebble Beach War.” In the warm glow of success, Pinkham vowed he would return again and again, if necessary, to keep the gate open.

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(Galen Wolf watercolor of Loren Coburn’s Folly, also known as the Pebble Beach Hotel, south of Pescadero.)