Email John Vonderlin ([email protected])
Email Russell Towle ([email protected])
John Vonderlin (JV)
Yes, the jeep road Hank Bradley would access his beach kingdom from still exists. It suffered some damage from the spectacularly high tide/big wave event we had this Spring, but it looks easily repairable. I suspect the old jeep one of his family member uses to this day to patrol the beach is the same one you were talking about. I also believe that jeep road you mentioned he would drive down to access the beach is the same one used by the “Cape Horn/Alligator Rock” travelers to get off the beach, back on top of the bluff, over a century ago.
Russell Towle (RT)
Yes, that makes sense. That little road has the look of an old road. But for a loaded wagon to traverse that beach … I don’t know …maybe if a horse-drawn scraper went over a route at the base of the cliffs and got rid of some of the sand … they wouldn’t have had the benefit of the constant shedding of rock debris from the cliffs above, as they had farther south … those rocks make a viable surface …
It actually begs the question, when the ranchers of Año Nuevo needed tonnage of supplies or farm equipment, how did they get it? Via the ocean? Or via a road or roads?
I don’t recall the LSD story. Maybe it was after my time. I still have a kayak Hank pulled off his beach back then, in 1971 I think. It just washed up empty, with a couple of its wooden ribs broken. We used to idly speculate on who abandoned it, where, under what circumstances. I used to take that kayak into the ocean, but it was scary.