The past couple of days we’ve had guests from back east. Burt’s cousins. (Burt is my partner.)
The cousins had visited Muir Woods on their own, and I told them I would show them our lovely redwoods. Which are much better. Well, of course.
Back east folks are more familiar with Marin County than San Mateo County, so the nice cousins were astounded when I drove them down the most beautiful redwood-lined road in the world: Tunitas Creek Rd.
The plan was to go from Half Moon Bay east to Skyline, south to Tunitas Creek, west along the redwood & sword fern bordered road to Hwy 1 south to our yummy final destination: Duarte’s Tavern.
Best plan we ever made. We had sensational crab cioppini and fresh fish and berry pie a la mode. I had some chocolate sauce, too, not a good mix with fresh berries, though.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Through the redwoods and down to Duartes for berry pie
Do you remember that picture of a mossy green algae ball I sent you and you posted, hoping somebody could identify it? Well Meg came up with the answer.
It is called the Pincushion of the Sea, or Astroturf of the Ocean, or Tuft Algae. It is Cladophora Columbiana. Despite being relatively common in the low to mid-intertidal zone its classification is a taxonomic battleground. Apparently the size of the balls that wash ashore are a good indication of the health of the intertidal zone.
Here’s a little excerpt from a page on the Monterey Marine Sanctuary page called Cladophora Balls on the Brain: The URL is below.
Possible Uses for Cladophora Balls …Cladophora Main Page Life History … 1996 by Angie Nakano, who gives anyone permission to use anything on this page, …
In Japan, Aegagropila enjoy somewhat of a “cult” following. A certain lake in Hokkaido is known to form especially perfect Cladophora balls, which the local “Aidic” people involve in their summer festival. A folktale accompanies the dense green spheres, in which the hearts of a young couple who drown in the lake turn into Cladophora balls. Aegagropila’s popularity in Japan has even spread to more urban areas. Tokyo has a bar named “Marimba,” the Japanese word for the balls, which sells plastic souvenirs in the the shape of the popular alga. In recent years, aegagropilous Cladophora has even become a protected species in Japan, and a Cladophora ball postage stamp has been issued.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Mystery of the Mossy Green Algae Ball Solved
Nobody was willing to disagree that the barricaded gate to Pebble Beach had been deliberately ripped open and tossed aside. Not the men who tore it down; not the non-participating witnesses; not the man whose men put the barricaded fence/gate up.
J.C. Williamson, who was soon to leave Levy Brothers and open his own popular, long-lived general store called Williamson’s in Pescadero, testified that the deed had been done. “Certainly…,” he told a jury. “That is the only way we had to get through there.”
Straightforward, bold, self-assured. Echoes of the “wild west.”
The oldtimers didn’t like the unfriendly fences, the gates. Loren Coburn reportedly owned some 10,000- acres and the “keep out” signs seemed to multiply. The Pescaderans were horse-riding folk and Pebble Beach was part of the town.
The county newspaper added: This case of a united people without a dissenting voice, pitted against a grasping, miserly, avaricious money-bags stands without parallel.
That pretty much summed it up.
———–
(Remember, in Loren’s earlier “life” as the 1850s owner of a horse stable in San Francisco’s financial district, he often encountered American lawyers and was privy to conversatons about “controversial” ownership of the old Coastside ranchos, including the land Coburn wanted. In fact, Loren had a head’s up on acquiiring the beautiful South Coast property. He heard about it from one of his clients an attorney.]
————
You fence tearing down and building up was very serious business. The day after the gate had been ripped apart at Pebble Beach, Loren Coburn sent his men to rebuild it. Charles Pinkham, in his official role as county roadmaster, personally removed the obstructions.
According to witnesses when Coburn told Pinkham to stop, the roadmaster replied that he was only doing his duty.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on The Coburn Mystery: Chapter 50
While attempting to learn more online about Loren Coburn’s only lasting legacy, Lake Lucerne, I encountered some interesting things. One of them is not who came up with the name for this picturesque coastside reservoir. I suspect Loren Coburn, obsessed with competing with the fancy Del Monte Hotel in Monterey, may have used the name of one of the most beautiful lakes in Europe, if not the world, as part of his plan. However, I can find no source for that belief.
I was also unable to find any source for the name Frijoles either. My memory was that the creek that feeds the lake is called Frijoles, Los Frijoles or Bean Hollow Creek. I had thought that the name was first applied by somebody in the Portola Expedition of 1769-1770. Furthermore, I thought the name had to do with some local plant (perhaps the Pacific Coast Lupine) that has bean-shaped seeds on them. They certainly would have been noticed, and perhaps consumed, as the expedition passed through the area in mid-Fall. Some varieties of Lupine seed have been used as food or forage for thousands of years. Others are toxic, teratogenic and cause birth defects like “Crooked calf disease.”
As of yet I have been unable to confirm that Portola’s expedition is responsible for the name, as I can only find the diary of Miguel Costanso, the expedition’s engineer, online, and he doesn’t mention it. There are a number of other diaries from expedition members, so perhaps one of them was my source.
I did find that the beach the creek flows onto is called Los Frijoles Beach, not Bean Hollow Beach, which is to the north of the parking lot in the Bean Hollow State Park. I also found that further up the watershed there are apparently two lakes, called the Bean Hollow Lakes or the Arroyo de Frijoles Reservoirs interchangeably. Apparently P.O.S.T. owns these too and doesn’t allow access.
While I couldn’t find the origin of the use of the name Frijoles, I did run across some information on the driving force behind the origin of some of the other names along our coast. That occurred when I was websearching variations of search terms along with “Frijoles.” One of the websites that popped up was”Postcards From Pescadero.” This was an online article by Pete Holloran, a naturalist and botanist, well-versed in our coast’s natural history. It uses an engaging concept to present a number of interesting facts about the San Mateo coast’s natural and human history over the last 12,000 years. While his use of the word “Frijoles,” which is what brought it up on my screen, referred to the Frijole Fault, part of the San Gregorio Fault Zone, which is part of the San Andreas fracture zone, it was his tidbit about beachcombing history that gave it relevance in my search for the origin of local names. This is the URL of the online article from Bay Nature Magazine:
Beachcombing along our coast became very popular, and economically important, because of the longlasting avocation of creating “Cabinets of Curiosities.” If you check Wikipedia for the term “Cabinet of Curiosities” you’ll find an extensive article on the origin of the idea, its significance in the natural sciences, its flowering in Europe and Great Britain and its eventual import to Victorian Age America. Collecting natural oddities became a raging fad in the late 1800s along our coast. Seaside resorts would name nearby features to highlight the curiosities that might be found there, hoping to increase their desirability as a destination. Pescadero and other San Mateo seaside resorts covered all the bases with a Pebble Beach, a Shell Beach, and a Moss Beach. The moss in this case was sea moss or algae. It was very popular with collectors who would dutifully gather, dry and press specimens much as leaf, plant or flower collectors do nowadays. Please note that at this time the lagoon between Pescadero and the ocean was much larger and it was a common past-time to row to the beach from the “downtown” Pescadero’s Swanton Hotel or other lodging, making Pescadero a seaside resort even though it was a mile inland.
Meg jokingly said that my whole property is a “House of Curiosities,” which might be true. Unfortunately, I’m not open to the public. However, San Mateo has a private museum with many “Cabinets of Curiosities,” called “The Zymoglyphic Museum.”. Unfortunately, it is open only once a year during the Silicon Valley Open Studio artist program. However, you can check it out online at Zymoglyphic.org anytime. The curator and creator is a very interesting individual whose vision is both whimsical, educational and wildly creative. Enjoy. John
Posted inJohn Vonderlin, Lake Lucerne|Comments Off on The Swiss have a beautiful Lake Lucerne…and, uh…So do the Pescaderans…
Sarah Upton witnessed the group of men storming the gate at Pebble Beach on September 12, 1891. She sat atop her horse when she recognized the owner of the local general store, the roadmaster and county supervisor. Her brother-in-law, Loren Coburn, said he owned Pebble Beach. This was the place where he planned to build a hotel overlooking the beach, a stable, too, all controversial projects.
In the meantime, to keep people out, Coburn’s men had barricaded the gate with wood and chains and padlocks.
Roadmaster Pinkham and his assistants had their orders. They went to work removing the wood, the chains and padlocks. This was a task Pinkham would face again and again and again.
J.C. Williamson, who managed the Levy Brothers store in town, studied the materials used in the process of obstruction.
Sarah watched the whole thing, shaking her head. She saw Loren’s enemies carry heavy boards and ram their way through the gate. They ran down to the beach where they celebrated their success among the famous pebbles.
One observer wrote: A more orderly, quiet or harmonious assemblage never met on the beach. This case of a united people without a dissenting voice pitted against a grasping, miserly, avaricious money-bags, stands without parallel.
No one on either side knew who actually opened the gate. Not Sarah. Not J.C. Williamson.
Sarah described it as a quiet gate-bursting party. “…They hollered and swore,” she said. She heard them say unkind things about Loren, swinging the effigy about at the same time. Some people said the effigy was burned but others said it remained “in prime condition.”
Sa
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on The Coburn Mystery: Chapter 49
Part 4 Story & Photos by John Vonderlin
Email John ([email protected])
Hi June,
Before venturing out to photograph Lake Lucerne, and the remnants of the Bean Hollow Bridge, I checked them out on the California Coastal Records Project website. Picture 6283 shows the area very well. You can see the beach, the creek’s outlet onto the beach, Highway 1, the marsh the bridge used to span, Bean Hollow Rd, and Lake Lucerne in the background.
By doubleclicking on the photo you can access the large photo file and see, if just barely, some of the remnants of the old bridge’s pilings in the marsh. Unfortunately, when you hit the “Time Comparison” button and get access to the photos from 1972, 79 and 87, they are of insufficient resolution to follow the decay of the pilings through the last few decades. Still, the aerial photos gave me a good idea where the historic photo had been shot from. My plan was to reshoot it from that same angle, hoping to show the changes wrought on the area by more then a century’s passing. It turned out to be not so easy.
Our first stop was along Bean Hollow Rd, at a pulloff by the spillway. Nowadays, Coburn’s dam has been replaced by the rampart that the road sits on. The rampart has been clad with a concrete-facing on the lake’s side as this picture shows.
The floodgates are gone and the spillway is nothing more then a small bridge over Frijoles Creek’s concretized exit towards the sea.
Looking across the marsh towards Highway 1, you can see the remnants of three rows of pilings, just as the historic photo shows the bridge had.
If you care to stomp through the pickleweed and other marsh plants you can see the northern concrete footings of the old bridge.
I must say it amazes me that the stumps of the piers still exist after considerably more then a hundred years of sitting in the water or mud of the marsh. I wonder what kind of preservative they must have been soaked in. Undoubtedly not anything the E.P.A. approves of these day. Some have been eroded into attractive stumps.
From there it was time to see if I could get that shot from above Highway 1 from the same place the historic photo was shot. The bane of so many of my exploratory trips, poison oak, thwarted me repeatedly. It was everywhere on top of the hill west of the highway where I judged the shot had been taken from. By sneaking under a large pine tree I got to what I judged to be the right height, but the tree blocked my view and the poison oak kept me from moving into the clear. Giving up, I walked along the east side of the Highway I and got a few nice shots of the pilings from the south.
Heading north I got this one, probably the closest to the old bridge shot.
That’s a Great Gray Heron, we spooked, in the middle of the photo.
Finally, not wanting to give up, I lined myself up with the pilings and risked bushwacking downhill from Highway 1, to where I could get a clear shot of them from above. Fortunately, the poison oak was only scattered through the bushes at this point and by holding my hands above my head and letting my boots stomp things down to make a path, I was able to move into position to get this shot of the pilings (#035
)and this picture of Loren’s legacy, Lake Lucerne.
Happy with my moral victory, we immediately headed to the beach for a good wet sand scrub of any possibly-toxin-exposed skin area. I’m even happier to report this quick action prevented any unpleasant itchy aftereffects. The saltwater’s stinging in the handful of scratches I’d gotten seemed a small price to pay for an interesting view of another bit of forgotten history of this wonderful coast. I suspect the grumpy curmudgeon, Loren Coburn, would have had some solace that at least the picturesque Lake Lucerne remains as a memorial to his unfulfilled dreams, and probably would have chortled at the fact that with P.O.S.T. now owning most of the land around the lake, it is still off limits to the people of Pescadero. Enjoy. John
“If you look closely at the photo you can see Lake Lucerne above and behind the carriage on the bridge. You can also see the low dam, equipped with floodgates, that was built by Loren Coburn to create the lake.”
As I noted in the first two parts in this posting about Coburn’s Folly, seemingly all signs of the previous existence of a grand hotel that had been perched above the once nationally famous Pebble Beach, are now gone. But, while the hotel and livery are entirely gone, there still remains a huge memorial to Loren Coburn’s dream to create a seaside resort that would rival the famous Del Monte Hotel at the other Pebble Beach in Monterey. I discovered that while reading your book, “The Coburn Mystery.”
On Page 97, The Pebble Beach Hotel chapter begins:
“Coburn’s “modern caravansary”, the Pebble Beach Hotel, had not opened its doors. Out of spite, Loren vowed he would not open the hotel until the “foolish” Pescaderans came to their senses. Estimated to cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the empty three-story, hotel, with a wide veranda stretching around it, was dubbed, “The White Elephant” and “Coburn’s Folly”. The villagers sneered that nobody could live in Coburn’s hotel, even if it were opened in the grandest style.
A San Francisco reporter wrote an unflattering portrait of the empty hotel as a home of rats, a place nobody would visit. In the daytime it was eery to walk through the echoing chambers and corridors. Outside the wind howled and the waves crashed. The wind sailing through the top floor sounded ghostly, especially when mixed with the sounds of the bats and owls that lived there.
Numerous windows on the ocean side had been broken by birds flying through them. Some windows had been boarded, but still the wind swept through the hallways stirring up tiny tornadoes of dust.
Loren feared the villagers might seek revenge by destroying the hotel, and he hired a watchman named Patrick Regan to protect the building from being set on fire. Regan who roomed in the stables, patrolled the building at night.
The bad press cast a dark shadow over the big empty hotel. Another story said the hotel was the only building for over a mile, and the beach nearby was bleak; barren rocks lined the shore. The hills to the east were described as wild and desolate. There was nothing inviting about the Pebble Beach Hotel that would compare with the Del Monte.
On the contrary, soothsayers predicted a “sure death” for those brave enough to wade in the ocean in front of the hotel. If not death by drowning, then serious injuries could be sustained from the jagged rocks and the untamed surf that crashed on the sandy shore.
But Loren was resilient. He was proud of the gleaming white Pebble Beach Hotel. The rooms were well-lit and good-sized; there was hot and cold running water. He continued was his plans for a resort. A race track was laid out. A large pavilion was planned. He built a dam across a creek a mile from the hotel so his future guests would have the advantage of sea bathing. When the tide flowed in the floodgates would close, forming beautiful little Lake Lucerne.”
Well how about that? Little Lake Lucerne, a body of water I’ve driven by many times, wishing I could kayak on it, but not willing to violate the “No Trespassing” signs, is apparently the only lasting memorial to Loren Coburn’s dreams. While the “Spanish Lady” as some called the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 and 19, ended his life, and the building of Highway 1 removed the last vestiges of his grand hotel, the little lake remains much as it was over a century ago.
While I was waiting for some free time to go out and look at and photograph the area with the “new eyes” this knowledge afforded me, I came across an historical photo that showed a carriage passing over the “Bean Hollow Bridge,” sometime in the 1890s or early 1900s. The photograph is apparently from the Ruth Louise Steele Collection which is archived with the Pescadero Historical Society. I’ll try to see if I can get a clear copy of it rather then this thrice removed version. But to me the new knowledge that it had existed gave me an exciting epiphany, that must be what that odd lot of stumps in the water and marshland between Bean Hollow Road and Highway 1 are.
In Part 4 of this posting I’d like to relate my little adventure and share some pictures I took of these historical remnants. Enjoy. John
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on John Vonderlin Returns to Coburn’s Folly
Story/Photos by John Vonderlin
Email John ([email protected]) (Watercolor of Pebble Beach Hotel believed to be by Coastside artist Galen Wolf.)
Hi June,
It has been a while, but I’d like to return to detailing the results of my search of the site of where “Coburn’s Folly,” Loren Coburn’s, never-opened three story hotel, used to be, perched on a promontory above the famous Pebble Beach of Pescadero. As I related in Part 1, there was “no there”, there, as far as finding remnants of the hotel’s existence. I did find one sliver of brick, but it was obviously too modern to have been from a century ago..
Amongst the numerous chunks of broken glass I collected from beneath bushes or under boulder’s shoulders, most were from modern pint bottles of hard liquor. But, my interest was piqued when I found this remnant of a brown Clorox bottle.
Remembering them from my childhood, I websearched and found out this kind of bottle was discontinued in the early 1960s. While there are collectors who might have identified the bottle’s age more accurately if the bottle had been whole, such was not the case.
Curious of what the few guests Loren ever allowed to stay at the hotel might have viewed from the veranda I climbed up the rocky promontory just west of Highway 1. As I scrambled up the last part of a steep gully and launched myself on to the top, I realized I had stumbled into a solid patch of poison oak. Like I’d stepped over a log and heard the angry warning of a disturbed rattler, I made a panicky retreat, leaving one of my shoes behind.
Gingerly reclaiming it, I made a tactical withdrawal and hiked south to where a vague path with much less poison oak led up to the ridgetop. Here is what a visitor would have seen a hundred years ago as they looked out on the ocean from the veranda of Coburn’s “White Elephant,” as some Pescaderans called it.
Satisfied there really wasn’t much more to see, I was headed back to my car when I saw an unusual colored rock, at least for that area, under the overhang of a boulder.
Picking it up I was surprised to find it was a “faux” rock, apparently made of fiberglass. Inside its hollow shell was a small bottle inserted into a small ring cast into the “rock.”
I realized it was a geocache and curiously opened the bottle. It contained a few little mementos, and a rolled up set of papers with over one hundred names on it of the people who had located the geocache and when they had done so.
How cool. Though I’ve had two GPS devices I rarely have need to use them and am not a geocacher.
However, with a little websearching, using “Coburn’s Folly and geocache” as the search term, I quickly found the specific geocache site this was. The URL is: geocaching.com.
Enjoy. John.
Posted inJohn Vonderlin, Pebble Beach Hotel|Comments Off on No “There” There…Poison Oak-ey Return to Coburn’s Folly: Story/Photos by John Vonderlin
There was a rock ‘n roll radio show in San Francisco that I listened to, and kids would call in with requests to play their favorite songs. The best part was when the host told the audience who had asked for the song. The only name that has remained with me all these years is The Purple People Eater.
I didn’t know what a “Purple People Eater” was—but I loved the name. It was the best name I had ever heard. I didn’t even think of making up my own name. I was a little kid: Much too shy to call into any radio show, though. I was just a listener.
Until one day when a burst of boldness woke me up.
Guess what I did? I called in and requested a song for the Purple People Eater. The man who took my call had a radio announcer’s voice, mine was small. If he doubted I was the real Purple People Eater, he didn’t let on. And a few minutes later I heard him say the next song was for me? The Purple People Eater.
Those not familiar with this relatively new and explosively popular game? hobby? excuse to go on a mystery solving adventure?, should websearch Wikipedia “Geocache” to familiarize themselves with its many variations.
This geocache’s creators, Purple People, start their Coburn’s Folly site description with the following sentence, then go on to compactly and accurately describe the site and its relevant history.
“Little shows that this was once the site of a resort that might have rivaled the more famous Pebble Beach to the South. A few drilled or shaped chunks of sandstone, some long-decayed asphalt, and escaped calla lilies and periwinkle run wild.”
I had to join the Geocache organization to communicate with PurplePeople, but you can check out most of the other sites they’ve created at the URL above without doing so. They typically have composed an interesting historical summary about each site to go along with directions to find its location. Here are just a few of the titles I found particularly intriguing: The Lost Village of Lobitos, Toy Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Ghost Railway of Palo Alto, The Old Bay Bridge, Doughboys of Menlo Park, The Explosion of the Jenny Lind, The Lost Village of Searsville, and Moving Monument.
Finally, being old enough to remember the Purple People reference, which comes from a song performed by Sheb Wooley in 1958, I Wikipedia-ed it and learned that the decades old question of whether it refers to a purple monster who eats people or a monster who eats purple people has not been fully settled.
Coincidentally, the One-eyed, One-horned Flying Purple People Eater, was the inspiration for Lord LitterAll, my still-being-added–to Marine Debris artplay piece. Enjoy. John
Posted inGeocaching, John Vonderlin|Comments Off on Welcome to Geocaching.com…. new mysterious game
