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    Point Lobos
    Point Lobos
    Point Lobos
    Ebook191 pages55 minutes

    Point Lobos

    By Monica Hudson and Suzanne Wood

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    About this ebook

    For more than a century the incomparable beauty of Point Lobos has drawn admirers from around the world. The jagged rock outcroppings, driftwood-strewn beaches, and silhouetted cypress trees, twisted grotesquely by the wind, were favorite subjects for photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. Point Lobos is also a favorite playground for seals, sea lions, and otters, and migrating grey whales pass just offshore. Barking sea lions reminded 18th-century Spanish explorers of sea wolves, in their tongue, lobos marinos, and so they named it Point of the Sea Wolves. Now a California State Reserve, Point Lobos draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439630815
    Point Lobos
    Author

    Monica Hudson

    Co-authors Monica Hudson, a Point Lobos resident and former interpreter for California State Parks, and researcher Suzanne Wood, a docent at Point Lobos, have created a beguiling pictorial history of the famous landmark. Drawing from the collections of the Carmel and Monterey public libraries, the family archives of the Allan and Kodani families, and other private collections, they illustrate that history from the 19th century to modern times.

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      Book preview

      Point Lobos - Monica Hudson

      proceeding.

      INTRODUCTION

      Faces of the past—seen through photographs of Point Lobos—inspire both historian and general observer alike. Some stiffly gaze at a camera for studio portraits; others smile and laugh for a simple snapshot at a Sunday picnic. Through their faces, we can somehow touch them, know them, and begin to understand their lives. It is also fascinating to peer at a landscape of long ago, to see what the land looked like more than a century before, the way the mountains sloped before the trees grew in, and the men who built the roads that allowed access to a formerly wild area such as Point Lobos.

      Many of the people who have lived at Point Lobos were there long before the invention of the camera. We will never know how the Native Americans who called this headland home looked. Rumsien Indians inhabited Point Lobos for 2,500 years, disappearing from the area before 1850. We can see middens of abalone shells they left behind and fire-darkened soil as we walk around Point Lobos. But we cannot see their real faces; they remain in the shadows. We can only pay them respect for their husbandry of the land. Similarly, no images remain of the Spanish vaqueros, or cowboys, sent by the Carmel Mission to Point Lobos to herd cattle in the 1770s. Spain lost control of Alta California in 1822 to Mexico, but the custom of issuing grants of free land to its citizens continued. There is no picture of Don Jose Escobar, the first grantee of Rancho San Jose y Chiquito, which included Point Lobos. The faces of subsequent owners, such as the Monterey Presidio soldiers who won the rancho in a card game, are also missing from the Point Lobos photographic record. Around 1851, several Chinese families established the first fishing village at Point Lobos’ Whalers Cove. They left us a building, one of several houses and shacks that comprised their village, along with shards of pottery and other household artifacts. We have an image of just one of these people, Quock Mui, who was born in that small Chinese community.

      The photographic history of Point Lobos begins with Portuguese whalers who had their houses in the meadow at the head of Whalers Cove. They arrived in 1861 and braved the sea around Point Lobos to hunt whales. With the introduction of kerosene, there was no further need for whale oil, so these whalers took to raising cattle and producing milk and cheese. Japanese abalone fishermen began to arrive at Whalers Cove at the end of the 19th century. They built their village on the bluff on the north side of the cove and pursued the abalone with great success, their efforts documented by a wealth of wonderful photographs. A business relationship grew between Gennosuke Kodani, a marine biologist sent by the Japanese government to the Monterey area to look for abalone fishing sites, and A.M. Allan, who bought the Point Lobos property in 1898. Kodani and Allan set up and operated an abalone cannery into the late 1920s.

      The Allan family features prominently in this book. It was Allan who bought the land that became Point Lobos. There he made his family’s home and developed enterprises such as abalone canning, ranching, and dairy farming, as well as sand and gravel mining. It was he who in 1899 set up a tollgate at the entrance of the property and charged visitors to enter Point Lobos to enjoy its beauty. Many members of the Allan and Kodani families still live in the area and have supplied family photographs that give us a vivid sense of what life was like on the ranch at the beginning of the 20th century. Gennosuke and Fuku Kodani had nine children and lived close to the Allans. The families were very friendly; in an old photograph of the area, a footpath is clearly visible between the two houses, as children went back and forth to play. People came from all over the world to spend time at Point Lobos. Weddings, picnics, private celebrations, and even movie-making all took place here. Artists and photographers were awed by the majesty of the scenery. Poets and writers spoke of its splendor.

      The land remains much as it was. Sea lions, harbor seals, and sea otters still delight in the waters of the coastline. The gray whales ply the coast twice a year on their migration between Alaska and Baja California; however, this book is about the people who lived at Point Lobos. They made their living in these magnificent surroundings and used the land and sea to survive. Today, only traces of their efforts remain, but their way of life partially survives in the photographic record. This book is also about those who have come to Point Lobos to find beauty, inspiration, and peace or simply came for the joy of looking at the land and sea. All these people let us see them through the eye of the camera.

      This postcard shows the coast of Point Lobos. The postage required for the United States and its possessions, Canada, and Mexico is 1¢, placing the postcard before 1951. (Jeff Haferman collection.)

      One

      WHALES AND ABALONE

      This etching is our earliest view of Point Lobos, credited to Charles Melville Scammon, a sea captain who observed the whaling operation at Point Lobos in 1865. Portuguese whalers started hunting whales here in 1861. To harpoon the whales, they rowed

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