Pescadero Memories

[Note: I wrote this in 1992; the photo appeared with the article.]

[Photo: The Keeper of the Lighthouse and his family and an assistant resided in this comfortable home at Pigeon Point light station built before the turn of the century. The sum of $12,000 was appropriated for the structure.]

“Novice” was the pen name of a restless South Coastside woman who joked in 1873 that “she would rather spend a whole week driving and sightseeing than in the wash-tub.”

(By driving, she meant via horse and carriage.)

When heavy winter storms kept the San Gregorio writer housebound, she couldn’t wait to get back on the road. And the moment there was a break in the weather, “Novice” was ready for an adventure on the South Coast–an adventure that would end up as a story she would mail for publication in the San Mateo County newspaper.

I’m ready, she said, looking at the gloomy gray sky “to drink any amount of salt air and stray bits of scenery.”

She invited friends to accompany her on the bumpy carriage ride, and the party arrived in Pescadero at 9 a.m.–but they didn’t remain long in the popular seaside resort. After a “vote,” she and her friends decided “to do” the Pigeon Point Lighthouse. A month earlier the new lighthouse had celebrated its first anniversary.

Surely when Novice and her pals arrived at the new landmark, they knew the back story; they had heard the gossip about the nasty legal battle over the nearby busy wharf (the only wharf for miles.)
Here are the juicy details: For a decade, Loren Coburn, the controversial landowner and world-class litigant, had leased the wharf to several ex-San Mateo County officials. They then modernized the primitive facilities making it possible for small steamers to load and unload local produce and supplies in a few hours instead of the usual two days.

Well, the lease had expired and now that the former county officials had made the improvements, they didn’t want to give up the property. They refused to honor the contract and the legal dispute landed in the courts.

In the meantime, there had been unfriendly confrontations and threats of violence. (For more details, read my “Coburn Mystery.”

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From: Cultural Resources of San Mateo County, 1980

Pigeon Point Lighthouse: Coast Highway, Pigeon Point

“First illuminated on November 15, 1872, this lighthouse was named for the clipper ship, Carrier Pigeon, that hit the rocks here on May 6, 1853. The tower, 115 feet in height and 28 feet in diameter, is constructed of bricks shipped around Cape Horn from Norfolk, Virginia. The light’s 9-foot diameter fresnel lens was built by Henri Le Paute of Paris in the 1850s.

“Illumination for the light first came from whale oil. Kerosene was later substituted, and then electricity to run the light, which is magnified to 800,000 candlepower in a beam seen 18 miles at sea. In 1974, an automatic beacon was set up on a platform outside the lighthouse, replacing the historic lens. The lighthouse is a State Historical Landmark, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the Historic American Building Survey.”

Images: Dorothy Regnery