Part 1

MOTORLAND

AFEA WFEA INFORMATION ON MONTEREY PENINSULA PLACE OF THE ANNUAL MEETING AUGUST 26-29, 1956

MOTORLAND SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1955 · Vol. LXXVI No. 5

_Published bi-monthly by_ CALIFORNIA STATE AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION

_Officers of the California State Automobile Association_

Edward H. Peterson President A. E. Strong Vice-President Fred J. Oehler Vice-President Irving H. Kahn Treasurer Edwin S. Moore Secretary and General Manager _Board of Directors_ Reginald H. Biggs Walnut Creek H. J. Brunnier San Francisco S. V. Christierson Salinas G. A. Filice Berkeley Dr. Charles B. Griggs Oroville Irving H. Kahn San Francisco Joseph R. Knowland Oakland J. J. Krohn Arcata Harold J. McCurry Sacramento Joseph F. McDonald Reno, Nevada Fred J. Oehler San Jose J. E. O’Neill Fresno Obert Pedersen Santa Rosa Edward H. Peterson San Francisco Clyde W. Rann Redding J. B. Rice San Rafael Prentiss A. Rowe San Francisco Porter Sesnon San Mateo A. E. Strong Santa Cruz Norman S. West Modesto _Honorary Life Director_ E. B. Degolia San Francisco _Inter-Insurance Bureau_ _Executive Committee_ Reginald H. Biggs H. J. Brunnier Irving H. Kahn Fred J. Oehler J. E. O’Neill Edward H. Peterson Porter Sesnon W. Foster Stewart Manager and Attorney-in-Fact

Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at San Francisco, California, under the act of March 3, 1879. Trade Mark registered October 25, 1911. Subscription, $2.00 per year; single copy, 50 cents. Office of Publication and Editorial Office: 150 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco 2, California. Editor and Manager, Wm. F. Kilcline; Associate Editors, Fred Hamann, John G. Holmgren, Samuel B. Wylie; Editorial Consultant, Arthur M. Johnson; Art Direction, Paul Q. Forster. Copyright 1955 by the California State Automobile Association.

Two Important Projects

The establishment of roadside rests and the construction of a bypass of the state parks on the Redwood Highway are two vital and important projects for California. Bills designed to accomplish these two worthwhile developments were introduced and passed by both houses of the Legislature, but they failed to receive executive approval.

In rejecting the bills, the Governor felt that they represented only a part of an over-all development of a future state parks program. As the head of this greatest of touring and motoring states, he fully recognizes the merit of roadside rests and the Redwood Highway bypass and indicates that they will receive further consideration during the budget session of the Legislature in 1956.

The touring business is a billion dollar industry in California. It has become an integral and even necessary part of our state’s economy. Whatever money is spent to foster and develop our tourist trade is an investment that will inevitably bring rich returns.

If California wishes to maintain its lead in the touring world, roadside rests are a “must.” All but five of the 48 states already have roadside rest programs. These carefully-picked, off-highway spots are places where motorists may make stops in safety. They also encourage motorists to keep highways clean by providing free facilities for eating lunches and disposing of litter.

Building a bypass highway around the redwood groves in Humboldt County is imperative. If a four-lane highway were plowed through them, along the path of the present route, there would be a shameful destruction of these beautiful and awe-inspiring marvels of the botanic kingdom. Some groves would be virtually eliminated. However, a bypass development to preserve these great trees can’t be put off much longer. The present route carries an increasing burden of traffic and the need for an improved highway grows more urgent each day.

Undoubtedly these two important measures will receive favorable action during the Legislature’s budget session next year. In fact, California can’t afford to let them be delayed too long.

_AROUND MONTEREY BAY Land of California’s Beginnings Offers Many a Charm for the Visitor_

In few places do History and Tradition, Romance and the Wonders of Nature combine to offer so much to the visitor as in the region surrounding the Bay of Monterey.

In the north is Santa Cruz, with its famous beach and lovely gardens, and backed by the Santa Cruz Mountains with their redwoods. Southward are historic old Monterey and Carmel, the art colony which has now become a Mecca for sight-seers and vacationists. South, again, extends a road between the mountains and the sea which is one of California’s scenic marvels.

And as if all this were not enough, Nature has endowed the inland valleys with such soil and climate that agriculture flourishes on a tremendous scale.

Santa Cruz grew from the mission of the same name, founded in 1791, and the settlement of Branciforte, established six years later. It might have been any other community in pastoral California until the Gold Rush, but then the newcomers demanded vegetables, which the Santa Cruz area was able to supply, and lumber, for which the redwood forests in the nearby mountains were raided.

Even in the seventies, however, this was known as a resort region, where the nabobs from San Francisco came to take their ease and recuperate from the strains of their latest coups of high finance. It came into full stature with the building of its first beach casino in 1906. Though this promptly burned, it was as promptly replaced with the ornate structure the public sees today. This has been further improved and renovated in recent times, as has also the Coconut Grove dancing pavilion which is an outstanding beach feature. Beside the mile-long beach of white sand with its beautifully clear water there is an indoor salt-water plunge and a boardwalk which runs eastward to the San Lorenzo River. These, with a varied assortment of rides and concessions, drew 2,000,000 visitors last year and bid fair to excel that figure by a fifth this season.

The city has other claims to fame in that it is the scene of the annual Miss California contest and the terminus of a yearly yacht race from San Francisco.

In the Santa Cruz Art League Galleries is a life-size waxwork, “The Last Supper,” modeled on DaVinci’s famous painting of the same name. In four years it has been visited by more than 260,000 persons.

_Blue and Peaceful or Bleak and Storming, the Ocean Wields a Never-Ending Influence Over the Region_

In the nearby mountains are the permanent convention sites of several religious groups, one of which includes a building capable of seating 5,000 persons. These and other conventions rank virtually as an industry in Santa Cruz’ economy. But Santa Cruz is more than a resort or convention city. It is a city of flowers. The Spanish Garden at its city hall is beautiful. The drive north along the ocean front takes the visitor past bluffs which are ablaze with colorful succulents and flowers. In season, whole hillsides south of the city flame with yellow bush lupine. Some of these plants have trunks as thick through as a man’s leg.

_PACIFIC OCEAN_

Bulbs, cut flowers and nursery stock are the biggest crop in the Santa Cruz area, though a vast quantity of strawberries is raised and the loganberry was developed in a Santa Cruz garden by James H. Logan, banker, attorney and superior judge, who crossed the wild blackberry with the Lawton berry to produce the delectable result. Brussels sprouts are another outstanding crop.

Santa Cruz also raises mushrooms, in old caves once used for aging wine and in newer concrete structures.

The largest bulb farms are at Capitola, shipping 3,500,000 tulip, lily, dahlia and begonia bulbs a year. As each of these in turn comes into bloom these farms offer a sight to be seen nowhere else. Championing the region’s claim to being the “Begonia Capital of the United States,” a festival is held each year on the waters of Soquel Creek, with thousands of blooms scattered over the water and colorful floating displays.

San Lorenzo Canyon, which begins a bare stone’s throw from Santa Cruz, is full of summer homes and resorts, including one famous inn where a mountain stream runs through the dining room.

Up this canyon, too, is the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, better known as “The Santa Cruz Big Trees.” The park comprises nearly 20,000 acres, but the “Big Trees” are a compact group, which may be seen in an easy walk of about a mile.

Farther north is Big Basin Redwoods Park, the oldest and largest of the State Park system, with many virgin growth trees and an interesting “Nature Lodge” which shows, besides flora and fauna of the park, the methods used in early day redwood lumbering.

In the city of Santa Cruz itself is Natural Bridges State Park, a notable example of erosion, and along the coast in Santa Cruz County are six other state parks—Seacliff Beach, where a World War I concrete freighter is used for a fishing pier and a fine road parallels the cliffs; Sunset Beach, with a high lookout and picnic ground under twisted cypresses; Capitola Beach, where there is a special pool for small fry; New Brighton Beach, Manresa Beach and Zmudowski Beach. At some of these campsites are available.

All through the mountains are interesting roads: the Empire Grade route from Santa Cruz through Bonnie Doon to Boulder Creek is particularly pointed out to visitors. In spring, so are the mountain apple orchards along the Valencia Creek route from Santa Cruz to Watsonville.

REDWOODS HENRY COWELL REDWOODS •SANTA CRUZ Lorenzo River Branciforte CO CAPITOLA •WATSONVILLE Pajaro River MOSS LANDING CASTROVILLE 17 Mile Drive PACIFIC GROVE MONTEREY _MONTEREY PENINSULA_ PEBBLE BEACH CARMEL POINT LOBOS Carmel River TO BIG SUR Salinas River FORD ORD MILITARY RESERVATION •SALINAS TO KING • _Offices of the California State Automobile Association_

Highly scenic routes from the north to the Monterey Bay region are, first, the Skyline Drive from San Francisco, then down to the San Lorenzo Valley and on through its fine redwoods to Santa Cruz, and, second, the beautiful highway which follows the shoreline from San Francisco south. The main route over the mountains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz is spectacular. The highway from Santa Cruz to Watsonville is a concrete ribbon between lovely rolling hills gay with color. On the Hecker Pass route from the Santa Clara Valley to Watsonville you can see redwoods, the whole coast of Monterey Bay, and four charming little lakes. The Chittenden Pass route, used by railroad and highway, traverses a gorge of real scenic interest.

Santa Cruz has its face to the future. Monterey, at the other end of Monterey Bay, never forgets that it was the place where history began for this region.

It was in what is now the city of Monterey that Portola, first governor of California, and Father Junipero Serra landed in 1770. Under an oak tree near the shore the good father held a service and founded a mission. A stone cross today marks the spot, though the mission was soon removed to its present site at the mouth of the Carmel Valley to be away from the presidio, or military post, which Portola set up. At this mission Father Serra made his headquarters and from it he supervised the building of the mission chain.

Under Spanish rule, presidio and mission were almost all the settlement but after Mexico had gained independence, adobe homes grew up in the hills, stores were built along the crooked streets and the Mexican government, less averse to foreign trade than the Spaniards, built a customs house. This still stands and, restored, houses a museum. It is one of five State Historical Monuments in the region, the others being the Serra landing place already mentioned: the Casa del Oro, which housed a store: the house where Robert Louis Stevenson lived for a few months late in 1879, and California’s First Theater, originally a sailors’ boarding house.

There are also standing more than a score of other structures erected in this Mexican era, including one built in 1835 by Thomas Oliver Larkin, first United States consul at Monterey, and Colton Hall, meeting place of the Constitutional Convention in 1849. This, like almost all the other remaining buildings, has been restored.

Monterey has laid out a scenic route leading directly to or near all of these historic structures, and also including several historic sites. Visitors may traverse this route merely by following an orange line painted on the street paving. At many points on it, special parking is reserved for them.

Whichever way you turn, there is something to be seen in this region. Just across from the Customs House is Fisherman’s Wharf, where the restaurants would feel unhappy if they had to serve you today fish that was caught as long ago as yesterday. Alongside it, the fishing fleet, decked in all the colors of the rainbow, rides at anchor. Farther along the beautiful ocean drive is the Hopkins Marine Institute, operated by Stanford University, and beyond that is Pacific Grove, with its beautiful marine park and beach at Lover’s Point and its famous Butterfly Trees.

Each October, thousands of Monarch butterflies migrate from Canada and Alaska to cluster on these pine trees in a small reservation known as Butterfly Park.

How the butterflies know which trees are “home” no one can explain, for they are hatched and pass through their chrysalis stage in the North. Indeed, in recent years it appears they have become confused: the number now visiting the original trees is greatly reduced and many of them are frequenting other pines several blocks away.

_Santa Cruz Means Redwoods and Mountains, Fertile Fields and Fragrant Orchards, Long White Beaches, Fishing, Festivals and Fun for All_

Also not to be overlooked in Pacific Grove is an excellent Museum of Natural History. Its collection of Monterey County birds and its displays of marine life found in nearby waters are exceptionally complete. In Butterfly Park is another museum, though it is called a gallery, in which are displayed hundreds upon hundreds of butterflies, moths and other insects.

If, like most visitors to Monterey, you continue to follow the bay shore, where miles of wildflowers adorn the bluffs, you will come eventually to the Seventeen Mile Drive, which runs through a tremendous private preserve. On this, for most of the way, you travel with the fantastically blue ocean on one hand and truly marvelous dark green forest on the other. At times your route runs on low bluffs near the ocean, and again you are on rocky cliffs high above. Back among the trees, near the Pebble Beach area where the sports car races are held every year, you frequently see homes that are almost palaces.

On your way you pass Cypress Point, which is one of only two places in the world where the Monterey cypress is indigenous, and Midway Point, a rugged rocky spine jutting into the sea and bearing a single lone and twisted cypress, probably the most photographed tree in the world. Not far away is the Ghost Tree, another cypress whose whitened trunk and limbs seem like the bones and shroud of a fleeing wraith. Then your route leads past Del Monte Lodge, with its array of fashionable shops, and on through Pebble Beach, and thence to Carmel.

Carmel is unique, a “village” conceived by artists and now perhaps the home of more well known writers, painters and other workers in the arts than any other community in the state. Carmel has no street numbers, no mail delivery, and you have to get permission from the town council before you may even cut down a tree on your own property.

In Carmel the trucks in which garbage is collected are adorned with baskets of flowers. The street signs bear carved and painted decorations—a pine cone, a squirrel, a ship under full sail, or something else associated with the region. The shops are small but legion, many of them hidden away in courts and arcades which the non-resident is likely to pass unwittingly. Their stocks are fabulous—and not all of it expensive, either.

In between are quaint places to lodge, to lunch, to dine or take tea after the English manner. Of course there are conventional establishments, too, but somehow everything in Carmel seems to have just a little different flavor.

The town stands on an oak-and-pine-clad slope with a magnificent beach fronting on Carmel Bay at its foot. Along the shore is a lovely drive, on which are homes beyond the dreams of most folk. Back among the trees are others. The comfortable domiciles built by the original artist colony still exist, but they are a minority; Carmel has become a place to which the wealthy, as well as the well-to-do and the merely comfortable, come to spend their later years.

Carmel has an outdoor theater, a Bach Festival and an art gallery maintained by an artists’ co-operative. Its Church of the Wayfarer has a garden containing, it is said, every tree, shrub, herb and flower mentioned in the Bible. Other gardens, formal and informal, are everywhere. Once a year a number of the finest are thrown open for public inspection.

And then there is the Mission San Carlos de Borromeo, where Father Serra held sway. The present church is not the one he knew; it was not begun until nine years after his death in 1784. But under its sanctuary floor he, Padre Crespi, Padre Lasuen and another lie buried. The structure has many features distinctive from the usual mission architecture, among them its massive south tower, with outside staircase and Saracenic dome, and a star window. It is of sandstone and has a vaulted roof as it did originally but in restoration the roof angle was made less sharp. Some of the original decoration may be seen in a small chapel to the left of the entrance. In a side chapel is a magnificent sarcophagus in marble and bronze, the work of Jo Mora.

A few miles south of the old mission is one of Nature’s wonderlands—Point Lobos Reserve State Park. Here stands the second native grove of Monterey Cypress, and here the ocean batters ceaselessly against spectacular rocky points which rise precipitously to make fjord-like coves. In these deep, sharp, inlets the blue water boils into furious bursts of white foam and spray, forming always-changing pictures of incomparable beauty.

_Lush Valleys of the Salinas and Pajaro Rivers Rich in Pastoral Charm, Even Richer in Their Vast Yields of Lettuce, Apples, Berries, Livestock_

Offshore is a group of rocks haunted by both California and Steller sea lions, an island much used by seafowl and naturally named “Bird Island,” and a roiling, turbulent channel appropriately called “The Devil’s Cauldron” which is a favorite spot of the sea otter. These strange creatures were long thought to have been hunted to extinction but about 30 of them appeared in 1938 off Bixby Creek, 12 miles south of Point Lobos, and there are now believed to be almost 100 in the group. Some ardent pursuers of wild life are already asserting that the otter have now increased to such an extent that the “crop” should be “harvested”—a policy which could easily result in extinguishing the species.

A mile below Point Lobos is Carmel Highlands, an area of rich estates and fine homes, some of them set on the very edge of the continent. The James house, in this area, has been called the most beautiful residence in the United States. And the gardens hereabout are a thing to marvel at.