Pescadero Memories

[I wrote this in 1977.]

Two years after the Great Blaze of 1926, sheriff’s officers followed a guide who led them over a trail covered with a tangled mass of ferns, shrubs and fallen trees. As the deputies hiked carefully through this secluded valley in the hills east of Pescadero, they guessed at what they would see ahead.

Yet the officers were amazed when they saw the size of the “mountain moonshine colony.”

In the beautiful green valley the cops saw a series of log cabins, hastily abandoned. Inside the cabins deputies found large vats with a holding capacity of 1000 gallons. In the center of the moonshine colony stood a big building with an electrical generator and other machinery.

The only inhabitants left were two chained and starving police dogs. They were barking loudly and despite their emaciated condition, attempted to lunge at the “invaders” who shot them down.

Inside another cabin there were overturned chairs and tables, bullet holes in the walls and windows and splotches of dark blood on the floor. Everything pointed to a terrific gun battle.

The cops theory was that some sort of dissension divided the “colony.” A bitter feud developed settled with gunfired. Those left alive feared unwelcome guests and quickly dispersed.

But what happened to the bodies? Nobody answered that question.

When more distilling equipment was discovered concealed beneath a nest of shrubbery, the police were convinced the bootleggers would return.

The “Mountain Moonshine Colony” was shut down but whether the people who ran it were found and arrested, we may never know.

[I wrote this in 1977.]

Rumrunners, bootleggers and raids by the liquor police remained topic number one on the South Coast until March 1926 when a quick-spreading fire rallied the small community to save the little town of Pescadero.

A local resident was filling his gas tank at the Coast Side Transportation Company when a few drops of the flammable liquid splattered a nearby lantern that was lit. Seconds later a loud explosion caused the man to cover his ears–and the building burst into a hot fence of flames.

Next door the warehouse caught fire, and the wind pushed the flames towards Duarte’s Lodging House and a soft drink parlor. On fire were Williamson’s General Store and warehouse.

Hundreds of citizens flocked to the disaster scene, forming a bucket brigade. There was no professional fire department; it was up to the residents to carry heavy pails of water from Pescadero Creek a thousand feet away.

Mrs. Manuel Enos, who for 30 years supervised the Pescadero telephone exchange, remained at her post even as the fire destroyed her own home. When Mrs. Enos learned that high tension wires interfered with fire fighter’s efforts, she calmly called the PG&E office in Redwood City and asked them to switch off the dangerous current.

When telephone service was lost, Pescadero’s lone traffic officer sped over the twisty road to San Gregorio where he called the Redwood City Fire Department for assistance. It didn’t take long for the Seagrave chemical pumper truck to race over the winding mountain road in the record time of one hour and 18 minutes.

As the fire truck screeched to a halt on the main street of Pescadero, firemen jumped down and dropped their hoses into the creek. At last powerful sprays of water cooled the hot flames, preventing the fire from spreading any farther.

Half the “business district” stood in ashes. Despite the emotional and economic tragedy, the owner of Williamson’s General Store displayed the pioneer spirit, announcing plans to rebuild in a new location next door to the Bank of Pescadero.

And within days a small army of carpenters got to work constructing half-a-dozen new buildings destroyed by the blaze that some described as the worst in the history of San Mateo County.

[Note: I wrote this in 1977.]

The how, where and when of landing illegal booze along the Pescadero coast was not something the locals openly talked about–but there were plenty of whispers about an isolated ranch house which reportedly served as local headquarters–the “where” where the booze was unloaded.

During one raid, the liquor police netted a dozen “alleged” smugglers, including higher-ups employed by a Canadian rumrunning company (which claimed a business of $12 million a year.)

Those who knew the landing point described it as elaborately fortified with a sophisticated system of signal lights that could transmit messages between the Canadian rum fleet and landing boats. A machine gun mounted on the beach warned possible hijackers to stay away.

[I wrote this in 1977.]

All during Prohibition, Pescadero provided the colorful backdrop for a violent whiskey war between smugglers…..and the residents of the tiny village.

And when undercover agents learned from their key sources that a well-connected booze ring routinely landed whiskey near Pescadero, the liquor police swarmed into the quiet seaside town. First on their list was to find $20,000 worth of missing Scotch whiskey bound for San Francisco.

Insiders, privy to the exclusive details, were persuaded to talk. As usual, these folks explained, the smugglers arrived when it waas dark to unload their valuable cargo on the secluded beach. But this time, the men temporarily buried the whiskey in the sand with the idea of digging it up later. With sand in their shoes, they fled the scene, not in high-powered automobiles, but in their high speed motorboats–to pick up more booze from a “mother ship” anchored some distance away.

Unknown to the smugglers, a gang of five locals hid in the shadows nearby, watching the rumrunners bury the whiskey in the cold sand–and as soon as it was safe they rushed over to the spot and dug the liquid treasure up. Within an hour the whiskey was being distributed throughout Pescadero and they had become “hijackers.”

This was a dangerous thing to do.

As soon as the rumrunners returned to the beach, and discovered their whiskey was gone, it didn’t take them long to figure out what had happened. Scowling, the heavily armed men headed for Pescadero, bursting into homes, threatening lives, demanding to know what happened to the stolen booze.

Finally they hit the jackpot and cornered one of the locals involved in the theft. During that long night, he was beat-up until he talked, implicating all his fellow “hijackers,” all of whom talked and finally returned what was left of the Scotch whiskey.

This was the dark side of Prohibition.

Early in 1924 an abandoned trawler, the SS Fremont crashed into the rocks near Ano Nuevo Island–arousing the curiosity of the alcohol police, as well as the locals, of course.

Just like the table talk at Duarte’s Tavern today, the Pescaderans debated the stranded boat’s destination. There were many opinions.

Some folks blamed it on the heavy seas that accounted for both the missing crew and their liquid cargo. Rumors circulated that this was not the first rumrunning disaster in the exact location. There had been a string of “disasters” in the exact same treacherous part of the South Coast.

An intensive search for the SS Fremont’s owners turned up the captain who was anxious to talk about his experience. The Fremont was a rumrunning vessel, he said, and it struck the invisible reefs when he mistook the light on “Mile Rock” [which signaled the westward turn into the Golden Gate.] The boat’s captain also revealed that everybody on board got away by swimming to shore– except for one crew member who drowned in the surf.

[Note: I wrote this in 1977.]

More than 20 prisoners watched in misery as Sheriff T. C. “Brick” McGovern shattered 1,000 bottles of illegal whiskey with a hatchet in 1925–at the peak of Prohibition.

It was the “father” of our country, George Washington’s birthday, and as fumes filled the county jail in Redwood City, the unhappy inmates, stuck behind bars, called the sheriff’s actions “un-American”….adding that Washington would have disapproved of such extreme measures.

Their humorous analysis didn’t move the sheriff as two convicted bootleggers were ordered to pick up the shards of glass and haul them off the garbage heap.

Strict Prohibition laws kept federal agents on their toes, with one eye on the goings on at secluded Pescadero, a favorite drop-off spot for rumrunners. In the early 1920s Chief Field Agent W.R. Paget led his armed forces in a raid on Ano Nuevo Island, south of Pescadero.

By then Paget and his men, interested in self-preservation, preferred to carry sawed-off shotguns on all Coastside missions. At Ano Nuevo*** as the unsuspecting smugglers unloaded their valuable cargo of whiskey from a small boat, Paget’s men cautiously closed in on another rumrunning operation near Pescadero.

According to plan, the feds, with guns drawn, completely surprised the smugglers. When the agents shouted “Give Up,” the heavily armed rumrunners instinctively dove behind the boxes of Scotch whiskey (which then sold for about $90 a case in San Francisco.) The smugglers, accustomed to danger, swore to risk everything, including the booze, before giving up to the authorities.

Bullets riddled the booze boxes, permeating the air with the strong smell of whiskey. The smugglers fired back, and there was a lot of noise, but on this occasion they were outnumbered and it was easy to figure out who was going to win. The final act was anti-climactic, a real frowner, as the rumrunners ran out of ammunition, dropped their weapons and emerged from their makeshift barricade.

Reportedly, Paget arrested several men and seized more than 240 cases of whiskey. Paget labeled one of the nameless men as the “man,” or “the mastermind,” behind three major liquor operations that routinely smuggled contraband whiskey from Canada to California.

Other reports described the same nameless man as the president of a Canadian rumrunner’s organization.

….Look for Part 2…..