Hi June,
As I mentioned previously, before hitting Ano Nuevo Beach and Bradley Beach last week I stopped by the Acid Beach area to check it out. I’m thinking of trying to reach it one more time by land and wanted to survey the last stretch beyond “Chicken’s Roost” again. I did some bushwhacking and got to a better angle to photograph the Warm Water Lagoon double arch. I still had the sun working against me, but these photos give a hint at what I think I can capture when I get up close. Enjoy. John
My first expedition to photograph as many of the Sea Arches of San Mateo’s coast as possible didn’t turn out in the way I had hoped. Having shot pictures of an embryonic arch on the north end of New Years Creek’s Beach some time ago, I did a virtual exploration of that area using the large file photos on the California Coastal Records Project website.
I thought I could see six or seven arches stretching north from the one I had photographed out to where the Elephant Seal rookeries begin on Ano Nuevo Point. So I decided to start there. With a nice minus .8 tide, I thought I’d be able to get around a couple of the promontories and get some nice sea level shots.
Parking along Highway 1, a half mile south of the Park Entrance, I used the “Johnny Don’t Pay,” route along the old road, over the bridge and down the moderately steep path to the beach. You can see this perfectly legal access route in Picture #200506697 on the CCRP website.
Turning north on the beach, I saw right away there was going to be problems. There were a handful of Elephant Seals
sprawled on the beach. Because they were high up the beach, I was forced to walk along the surfline, trying to keep my distance. I’ve seen the video of these two- ton males blobbing along the sand, faster then most people can run and had no desire to provide a sequel to the Tiger incident recently in the news. Noticing that several of them were mature, heavily scarred behemoths, I assumed they were probably losers in the fight for harems that’s going on in the rookeries now, and not in a good mood.
With these thoughts beginning to deflate my arch-documenting ambitions, I continued north until I approached the point where I was going to have to pass through a gauntlet of Elephant Seals, with one lying at the edge of the surf and another higher up on the beach. That’s when I decided I should turn around and explore south of the Park along Bradley Beach.
This way, too, is dangerous. Except at low tide, the first half- mile of the beach is hemmed in by unclimbable cliffs
against which powerful waves challenge the supremacy of our continent. And for more then a half mile after that, there’s no legal escape up the cliffs until you reach Alligator Rock at the foot of Waddell Bluffs, just beyond the border of San Mateo County.
In this “No Man’s Land,” I found the Monster: this Frankensteinian blasphemy, lay on the beach entangled in Bull Kelp, waiting for the next high tide to restore its Freddy Kreuger-like skills, so that it could once again torture, maim and kill the unwary. Pardon my melodrama, but let me introduce you to my most recent addition to one of my more relevant marine debris collections, “The Ghost Net of Bradley Beach.”
Here’s Wikipedia’s almost perfunctory description of what a Ghost Net is:
“Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been lost by fishermen. These nets are left to drift the oceans of Earth entangling sea life and causing varying degrees of damage throughout Earth’s oceanic ecosystem. A vast array of sealife is harmed by these lost nets, harming both vertebrates and invertebrates, including many different species of marine mammals.
“Many commercial fishing nets operate as ‘gillnets’. These are deployed as a ‘wall’, creating a vertical plane, often up to half a kilometre across, through which any fish within a certain size bracket will become caught and die. Normally, after a certain period, these nets will be collected by fisherman and the catch removed. However if this is not done (the nets become lost to storms, forgotten, etc.) the net will continue to catch fish until the total weight of the catch becomes larger than the buoyancy of the floats. The net will thus sink, and the fish devoured by bottom-dwelling crustaceans and other fish. Soon, with the weight on the net reduced, the floats will pull the net up again. This repeats itself until the net is destroyed or entangled on the sea floor. Given the high-quality synthetics that are used by commercial fishing operations throughout the modern world, such destruction can take decades.”
They say a picture is worth a thousand words so let me show you the effect these nets can have. This photo is of a Guadalupe Fur Seal pup I found on Invisible Beach,
a few years ago. It had probably been cavorting in the kelp forest with the joyful exuberance I’ve often seen in underwater photography when it became entangled in a piece of netting. Based on when I found it and the season its species are born in, it must have slowly starved to death over a period of months as the relentless piece of net tightened its grip. This pup may have been the first born of its species in this area.
The Guadalupe Fur Seal was hunted to assumed extinction only to recover from a hidden population on its home island off the Mexican coast. Protected from exploitation, its numbers have since recovered and its range has expanded, first to the Channel Islands and recently to the Farallones.
The famous Ray Bandar came to collect the corpse, performed the autopsy and made the identification. I was watching a DVD about him and his unparalleled collection of marine mammal skulls this evening. At one point he was discussing a sub-collection of his skulls of marine mammals, those killed by humans.
I was almost nauseated when he discussed several that had strange gashes in them. He had originally thought they were caused by the propellers of boats, but forensic investigation revealed that the line of nets the marine mammals had become entangled in, had slowly sawed through fur, and skin and finally bone, to leave the gashes in their skulls. The one where the skull had partially regrown to seal the line inside the skull of the still-living animal particularly assaulted my imagination.
The last picture is of the net resting on my lawn after cleaning, its terror spree finally stopped.
That is until my neighbor’s young cat, attracted by my untangling efforts, got its head stuck in the web and totally freaked.
Life without fingers can be a harrowing existence. Those of us that have them must be careful how we use them, lest we loose Monsters on the innocents. John Vonderlin
In the art world, sometimes it takes a long time for the right door to open. Last Saturday, I finally got to meet the owner and curator of the Beat Museum, click here, Jerry Cimino, in San Francisco, where my photo collage of Ken Kesey’s 1999 visit to La Honda has lived since April, 2007. Happily, I can tell you that he is open, knowledgeable, and interested in the two DVDs filmed at the Menlo Park Library events celebrating Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia in 2005 and 2006.
I am working on an idea for an event at the Beat Museum called “Celebrating Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia”. It would include a screening of the DVDs, and hopefully an encore performance of the spoken word and music of our local literary talent (Terry Adams) and musicians (Gary Gates & Friends, Mystic Cowboy), that performed at the library event.
I’m hoping that the event could be scheduled in the Spring, but of course this would need to be approved by Jerry Cimino before plans can be firmed up. I think that it will bring out the fans, and it will rock the big city.
Best wishes,
Leah
PS: The Beat Museum is having a party to celebrate Neal Cassady’s birthday on February 9 & 10, from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM. I plan to be there. All are welcome to attend.
It’s another “Arcadia” book. They publish the most interesting books these days….Here’s a book about arches that John Vonderlin wrote about in an earlier post.
Here’s the press release from UC Santa Cruz about the new book, San Mateo Coast: Now and Then by authors Gary Griggs and Deepikta Shrestha Ross.
September 19, 2006
A new book by Gary Griggs, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, and local architect Deepika Shrestha Ross offers a unique look at the Santa Cruz coastline. The book juxtaposes historic photographs with photographs taken from the same locations today, showing how the coastline has evolved and changed, sometimes dramatically, over the past century.
The book, Then and Now: Santa Cruz Coast (Arcadia Publishing, 2006), offers a pictorial history of the Santa Cruz coast, featuring many local landmarks and notable landforms along the coast. The authors worked with historians and curators of various collections of historical photographs to gather old images of the coast. The book includes photos from private collections as well as from local museums and libraries.
The next step was to try to locate where the older photographs were taken from so that the authors could take current photographs from the same location.
“As much as possible we tried to reoccupy the site where the photographer had stood to take the earlier photograph. This was sometimes challenging, but it was also fun,” Griggs said.
The striking images and accompanying text provide a fascinating perspective on the history of the Santa Cruz area. And the changes documented in the book provide clear evidence of ongoing erosion of the coastline and the hazards of coastal construction.
“If history tells us anything about the coast, it is that anything built on the shoreline should be seen as temporary,” Griggs said.
Griggs has lived on the central California coast for 38 years. An expert on coastal geology and geologic hazards, he directs the Institute of Marine Sciences at UCSC.
Coauthor Deepika Shrestha Ross is an architect who currently lives in Santa Cruz. Born in Katmandu, Nepal, she earned a degree in architecture from Cornell University and has worked in Washington, D.C., London, New York, and San Francisco.
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Note to reporters: You may contact Griggs at (831) 459-5006 or [email protected].
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Hi June,
While researching the Sea Arches on the San Mateo Coast, I came upon something that I found oddly fascinating. It primarily involves Sea Monsters. It might even be the original source of the entertaining, but seemingly fanciful, story you published by Galen Wolf, about the the Tunitas Sea Monster.
You see, there really was a day in 1925 that a Sea Monster washed ashore north of Santa Cruz. A Giant Sea Monster that scientists, journalists, and laymen were unable to convincingly identify as a known form of sea life. A Sea Monster that was tentatively identified at various times, as an extinct-for-many-millions-of-years Plesiosaurus, or a far astray Beaked Whale, or various other cryptozooitic animals, unknown to Mankind.
A Sea Monster whose descendants may still lurk in the Monterey Submarine Canyon, just off our coast. An abyss which offers the deepest, most mysterious depths on this side of the mighty Pacific Ocean. Depths that despite our developing technology are only slowly and begrudgingly revealing their otherworldly inhabitants to us.
This came to my attention because I borrowed from Meg, a new book, “Then and Now: Santa Cruz Coast.” It’s primarily about the numerous and famous sea arches of Santa Cruz, and their demise through the years. Since reading it, I’ve been researching where the arches on the San Mateo Coast are or were, what causes them to form, what destroys them, etc.
[Photos below are of arches once found around the Moss Beach area. If you know of more arches, please contact John, see email above.]
That’s when I came upon a Cryptozoology site (Think Yeti, Sasquatch and Nessie) that had the story about the Sea Monster on Moore’s Beach. Whether this beach’s namesake Charles Moore, is a member of the Alexander Moore family, who first settled Pescadero, I don’t know. Nor do I know if he is related to Charles Moore, the wealthy scion, who created the Algalita Foundation, an environmental organization dedicated to informing the public of the dangers of the ever growing amounts of plastics in our oceans, one of my favorite causes.
But I do know, as an inveterate, perhaps obsessive beachcomber, that I have often fantasized about making the kind of find Mr. Moore made that day. Just as powerfully, I have feared finding the beached body of those lost at sea or swept from the shoreline’s rocks by Neptune’s wrath. I was reminded of that recently when my last two trips to Tunitas Beach have turned up “The Contender’s” numbered Fish Tags, the last remnants of a fatal sinking several years ago. But, back to Sea Monsters.
Though Moore’s Beach has since been renamed Natural Bridges State Beach, (hence the Sea Arch connection) Moore’s name still lives on with the named-for-him Moore Creek, located nearby.
Before I link to the website that has pictures of the Sea Monster, local newspapers’ accounts of people who viewed it, and analyses by scientists who studied it, I wanted to insert, a perhaps, hard-to-believe account by Mr. E.J. Lear, whose story occurred several days before the Sea Monster washed ashore, but was related several days later to a reporter from, “The Santa Cruz Sentinel.” Whether there is a connection I don’t know.
“I was driving a team toward Capitola, when suddenly I was attracted by some young sea lions not far out. They were lined up and several large lions were swimming back and forth in front of them. Much farther out I saw the water being churned to foam and thrown high up in the air. It was shiny and I took it for a big fish. A dozen or more lions were battling it, and every once in a while all would rise out of the water. It looked to me as though all the sea lions were attacking it beneath as the monster came out of the water several times. In telling of the battle of that night I estimated its length at 30 feet.
“The battle continued as long as I could see it from the road. I was driving toward Capitola with a load of sand. I have not seen the monster on the beach, but it may have been that which I saw.”
The full story and pictures of the Sea Monster can be found here
Though I am a hardcore skeptic, particularly concerning cryptozoological stories, I realize that the ocean is the last great frontier on our planet, and that there are still many mysteries it has not yet divulged. I’d urge you also to keep an open mind and wish you a Happy Beachcombing New Year. The truth is out there and it might just wash ashore. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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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.
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.
I never met Kesey but, like many others my age, he made a big change in my life by writing “Cuckoo’s Nest.” Of course, it was a great book that fit in with the theme of the times, a great and ageless message: that it was okay to be you.
I never met Kesey but I wrote about him and even to him, receiving a wonderfully creative response in return.
I also drove past Kesey’s cabin many times on my way to Loma Mar or to the more secluded Coastside beaches. The home had it’s own “sense of place,” with a small, funky wooden bridge that allowed the person on foot easier access across the, what? The big gully? I can’t remember.
In his “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” book, Tom Wolfe described the scene as worthy of a Christmas card and when I think of Kesey’s house, that’s what I see.
In May, 1997, the San Mateo County Times’ Carolyn Jones broke the news: “The rustic log cabin that served as the lively epicenter for a generation of hippies, beatniks, Hell’s Angels and artists is being sold.”
Kesey’s home, where the colorful Merry Pranksters hung out (and who were not afraid of being themselves) was going for $239,000. Rumor was Kesey didn’t want to leave but he might have been encouraged due to an unfortunate accident involving a county sheriff who fell and injured himself on the property.
I haven’t met the Terry Adams family, the new owners , but they understood they were purchasing a precious piece of 20th century San Mateo County History. What greater homage to Ken Kesey, than this beautiful website, including “Prankster House, Hippie Empire, Psychedelic Mecca, Dragons, Wynchwood”…and more… click here.
(Note: Photo of Kesey’s house courtesy of Terry Adams.)
for future carrying up the hill when the ground dries up. I’ve got 12 of them poised at the bottom of the path. With those, in one fell swoop, I’ll be able to skip the Sixties, since I’m at 58 now. (For some reason I found that amusing.)
There was also a young woman doing some beach art I thought was poignant. She was using pretty seashells to create “True Love” in the sand. Alas, when the tide came in it will suffer the same fate its namesake usually does.
I talked with an oldtimer who was stuck on top of the hill, unable to find the easy route down that he remembered from 25 years ago. He told me there used to be an arch at the southern end of the beach. (Where the concretions and sea cave I wrote about are.) I looked on the 1972 photo from CCRP and he was right. Oddly, Meg had gone to a bookstore in Santa Cruz today and bought a book she’d been talking about filled with historic photos of the Santa Cruz area. It featured Natural Arches Beach and all the arches that have collapsed through the years. She wondered if new ones are being created to replace the lost ones. Or are they gone forever I’m not sure, but I assume there must be new arches growing somewhere. But where?
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