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Big Sur

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Big Sur is a sparsely populated region of the central California coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. This geology produces stunning views and has become a magnet for global tourism. Big Sur's Cone Peak is the highest coastal mountain in the lower 48 states, ascending nearly a mile (5,155 feet/1.6km) above sea level, only 3 miles (4.8 km) from the ocean.[1] Although Big Sur has no specific boundaries, many definitions of the area include the 90 miles (145km) of coastline between the Carmel River and San Carpoforo Creek, and extend about 20 miles (32km) inland to the eastern foothills of the Santa Lucias, while other sources limit the eastern border to the coastal flanks of these mountains, only three to 12 miles (4.8-19km) inland. The northern end of Big Sur is about 120 miles (193km) south of San Francisco, and the southern end is approximately 245 miles (394km) north of Los Angeles.

Map of Big Sur

History

Aerial photo of Big Sur in the 1930s

Aboriginal Americans

Three tribes of aboriginal Americans—the Ohlone, Esselen, and Salinan—were apparently the first people to inhabit the area now known as Big Sur. Archaeological evidence shows that they lived in Big Sur for thousands of years, leading a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence.[2] Few traces of their material culture have survived. Their arrow heads were made of obsidian and flint, which indicates trading links with tribes hundreds of miles away, since the nearest sources of these rocks are in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the northern California Coast Ranges. They followed local food sources seasonally, living near the coast in winter to harvest rich stocks of mussels, abalone and other sea life, and moving inland at other times to harvest oak acorns. Bedrock mortars, which are large exposed rocks that these people hollowed out into bowl shapes to grind the acorns into flour, can be found throughout Big Sur. The tribes also used controlled burning techniques to increase tree growth and food production. [3]

Spanish Exploration and Settlement

The first Europeans to see Big Sur were Spanish mariners led by Juan Cabrillo in 1542, who sailed up the coast without landing. Two centuries passed before the Spanish attempted to colonize the area. In 1769, an expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà were the first Europeans known to set foot in Big Sur, in the far south near San Carpoforo Canyon.[4] Daunted by the sheer cliffs, his party avoided the area and pressed far inland. Portolà landed in Monterey Bay in 1770, and with Father Junìpero Serra, who helped found most of the missions in California, established the town Monterey, which became the capital of the Spanish colony Alta California. The Spanish gave Big Sur its name during this period, calling the region el país grande del sur (the Big Country of the South) which was often shortened to el sur grande, because it was a vast, unexplored, and impenetrable land south of their capital at Monterey. The Spanish colonization devastated the aboriginal population. Most tribe members died out from European diseases or forced labor and malnutrition at the missions in the eighteenth century, while many remaining members assimilated with Spanish and Mexican ranchers in the nineteenth century.[5]

Ranchos and Homesteads

Along with the rest of California, Big Sur became part of Mexico when it gained independence from Spain in 1821. In 1834, the Mexican governor José Figueroa granted a 9000-acre rancho in northern Big Sur to Juan Bautista Alvarado, and his uncle by marriage, Captain J.B.R Cooper, soon after assumed ownership. The oldest surviving structure in Big Sur, the so-called Cooper Cabin, was built in 1861 on the Cooper ranch.[6] In 1848, as a result of the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded California to the United States. After passage of the federal Homestead Act in 1862, a few hardy pioneers moved into Big Sur, drawn by the promise of free 160-acre parcels. Many local sites are named after the settlers from this period - Gamboa, Pfeiffer, Post, Partington, and McWay are common place names. Consistent with the Anglo-Hispanic heritage of the area, the new settlers mixed English and Spanish and began to call their new home "Big Sur."

Industrial Era and Gold Rush

Bixby Landing in 1911

From the 1860s through the turn of the twentieth century, lumbering cut down most of the coast redwoods. Along with industries based on tanoak bark harvesting, gold mining, and limestone processing, the local economy provided more jobs and supported a larger population than today. In the 1880s, a gold rush boom town, Manchester, sprang up at Alder Creek in the far south. The town boasted a population of 200, four stores, a restaurant, five saloons, a dance hall, and a hotel, but it was abandoned soon after the turn of the century and burned to the ground in 1909.[7] There were no reliable roads to supply these industries, so local entrepreneurs built small boat landings at a few coves along the coast, such as Bixby Landing pictured here.[8] None of these landings remains today, and few other signs of this brief industrial period are visible to the casual traveler. The rugged, isolated terrain kept all but the sturdiest and most self-sufficient settlers out. A 30-mile trip to Monterey could take three days by wagon, over a rough and dangerous track.[9]

Before and After Highway 1

After the industrial boom faded, the early decades of the twentieth century passed with few changes, and Big Sur remained a nearly inaccessible wilderness. As late as the 1920s, only two homes in the entire region had electricity, locally generated by water wheels and windmills.[10] Most of the population lived without power until connections to the California electric grid were established in the early 1950s. Big Sur changed rapidly when Highway 1 was completed in 1937 after eighteen years of construction, aided by New Deal funds and the use of convict labor. Highway 1 dramatically altered the local economy and brought the outside world much closer, with ranches and farms quickly giving way to tourist venues and second homes. Even with these modernizations, Big Sur was spared the worst excesses of development, due largely to residents who fought to preserve the land. The Monterey County government won a landmark court case in 1962, affirming its right to ban billboards and other visual distractions on Highway 1.[11] The county then adopted one of the country's most stringent land use plans, prohibiting any new construction within sight of the highway.

Big Sur Artists

In the early to mid-twentieth century, Big Sur's relative isolation and natural beauty began to attract a different kind of pioneer - writers and artists, including Robinson Jeffers, Henry Miller, Edward Weston, Richard Brautigan, Hunter S. Thompson, and Jack Kerouac. Jeffers was among the first of these. Beginning in the 1920s, his poetry introduced the romantic idea of Big Sur's wild, untamed spaces to a national audience, which encouraged many of the later visitors. The region also became home to centers of study and contemplation - a Catholic monastery, the New Camaldoli Hermitage in 1958, the Esalen Institute, a workshop and retreat center in 1962, and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, a Buddhist monastery, in 1966. Esalen hosted many figures of the nascent "New Age," and in the 1960s, played an important role in popularizing Eastern philosophies, the "human potential movement," and Gestalt therapy in the United States. Big Sur acquired a bohemian reputation with these newcomers. Henry Miller recounted that a traveler knocked on his door, looking for the "cult of sex and anarchy."[12] Apparently finding neither, the disappointed visitor returned home.

Big Sur Today

Big Sur remains sparsely populated, with fewer than 1500 inhabitants, according to the 2000 US Census. The people of Big Sur today are a diverse mix: descendants of the original settler and rancher families, artists and other creative types, along with wealthy home-owners from the worlds of entertainment and commerce. Real estate costs are as impressive as the views, with most homes priced above $2 million. There are no urban areas, although three small clusters of gas stations, restaurants, and motels are often marked on maps as "towns": Big Sur, in the Big Sur River valley, Lucia, near Limekiln State park, and Gorda, on the southern coast. The economy is almost completely based on tourism. Much of the land along the coast is privately owned or has been donated to the state park system, while the vast Los Padres National Forest and Fort Hunter Liggett Military Reservation encompass most of the inland areas. The mountainous terrain, environmentally conscious residents, and lack of property available for development have kept Big Sur almost unspoiled, and it retains an isolated, frontier mystique.

A panoramic photograph taken from Partington Ridge near Big Sur approximately 1,000 feet above Highway 1.

Climate

Pictures taken on afternoons in June (upper) and December (lower). The summer picture shows a typical fog bank nearly 1000 feet thick.

It is impossible to generalize about the weather in Big Sur, because the jagged topography causes many separate microclimates. This is one of the few places on Earth where redwoods grow within sight of cacti. Still, Big Sur typically enjoys a mild climate year-round, with a sunny, dry summer and fall, and a cool, wet winter. Coastal temperatures vary little during the year, ranging from the 50s at night to the 70s by day (Fahrenheit) from June through October, and in the 40s to 60s from November through May. Farther inland, away from the ocean's moderating influence, temperatures are much more variable. Annual precipitation in the Big Sur Valley is about 40 inches (100cm), diminishing further to the south to about 25 inches. More than 70% of the rain falls from December through March, while the summer brings drought conditions. Snow is uncommon during the winter months on the coast, although the mountaintops can receive heavy snowfalls. The abundant winter rains cause rock and mudslides that can cut off portions of Highway 1 for days or weeks, but the road is usually quickly repaired.

Along with much of the central and northern California coast, Big Sur often has dense fog in summer. The summer fog and summer drought have the same underlying cause: a massive, stable seasonal high pressure system that forms over the north Pacific Ocean. The high pressure cell inhibits rainfall and generates northwesterly airflows. These prevailing summer winds from the northwest push the warm ocean surface water to the southeast, away from the coast, and frigid deep ocean water rises in its place. The water vapor in the air contacting this cold water condenses into fog. [13] The fog usually moves out to sea during the day and closes in at night, but sometimes heavy fog blankets the coast all day. Fog is an essential summer water source for many Big Sur coastal plants. Most plants cannot take water directly out of the air, but the condensation on leaf surfaces slowly precipitates into the ground like rain.

Flora

The many climates of Big Sur result in an astonishing biodiversity, including many rare and endangered species such as the wild orchid Piperia yadonii. Arid, dusty chaparral-covered hills exist within easy walking distance of lush riparian woodland. The mountains trap most of the moisture out of the clouds; fog in summer, rain and snow in winter. This creates a favorable environment for coniferous forests, including the southernmost habitat of the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), which grows only on lower coastal slopes that are routinely fogged in at night. The redwoods are aggressive regenerators, and have grown back extensively since logging ceased in the early twentieth century. The rare Santa Lucia fir (Abies bracteata), as its name suggests, is found only in the Santa Lucia mountains. A common "foreign" species is the Monterey pine (Pinus radiata), which was unknown in Big Sur until the late 19th century, when many homeowners began to plant it as a windbreak. There are many broad leaved trees as well, such as the tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), and California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica). In the rain shadow, the forests disappear and the vegetation becomes open oak woodland, then transitions into the more familiar fire-tolerant California chaparral scrub.

Tourism

Bixby Bridge, shown here looking southwest, is a popular attraction in Big Sur

Although some Big Sur residents catered to adventurous travelers in the early twentieth century,[14] the modern tourist economy began when Highway 1 opened the region to automobiles, and only took off after World War II-era gasoline rationing ended in the mid-1940s. Most of the 3 million tourists who visit Big Sur each year never leave Highway 1, because the adjacent Santa Lucia mountain range is one of the largest roadless areas near a coast in the lower 48 states. The highway winds along the western flank of the mountains mostly within sight of the Pacific Ocean, varying from near sea level up to a thousand-foot sheer drop to the water. Since gazing at the views while driving is not advisable, the highway features many strategically placed vista points allowing motorists to stop and admire the landscape. The section of Highway 1 running through Big Sur is widely considered as one of the most scenic driving routes in the United States, if not the world.

The land use restrictions that preserve Big Sur's natural beauty also mean that tourist accommodations are limited, often expensive, and fill up quickly during the busy summer season. There are fewer than 300 hotel rooms on the entire 90-mile stretch of Highway 1 between San Simeon and Carmel, only three gas stations, and no chain hotels, supermarkets, or fast-food outlets.[15] The lodging options are rustic cabins, motels, and campgrounds, or costly, exclusive five-star resorts frequented by Hollywood types and those who can afford to live like them, with little in between. Most lodging and restaurants are clustered in the Big Sur River valley, where Highway 1 leaves the coast for a few miles and winds into a redwood forest, protected from the chill ocean breezes and summer fog.

Besides sightseeing from the highway, Big Sur offers hiking, mountain climbing, and other outdoor activities. There are a few small, scenic beaches that are popular for walking, but usually unsuitable for swimming because of unpredictable currents and frigid temperatures. Big Sur's nine state parks have many points of interest, including one of the few waterfalls on the Pacific Coast that plunges directly into the ocean, the ruins of a grand stone cliffside house that was the region's first electrified dwelling, and the only complete nineteenth century lighthouse complex open to the public in California, set on a lonely, windswept hill that looks like an island in the fog.

List of state parks (north to south)

Trivia/Popular Culture

  • Orson Welles and his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth, bought a Big Sur cabin on impulse during a trip down the coast in 1944. They never spent a single night there, and the property is now the location of a popular restaurant.
  • Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred in the 1965 film The Sandpiper, featuring many location shots of Big Sur, and a dance party scene on a soundstage built to resemble the same restaurant. It is one of the very few major studio motion pictures ever filmed in Big Sur, and perhaps the only one to use real Big Sur locales as part of the plot. The DVD, released in 2006, includes a Burton-narrated short film about Big Sur, quoting Robinson Jeffers poetry.
  • Henry Miller lived in Big Sur from 1944-1962. His 1957 novel Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch described the joys and hardships that came from escaping the "air conditioned nightmare" of modern life. The Henry Miller Memorial Library, a cultural center devoted to Miller's life and work, is a popular attraction for many tourists.
  • Jack Kerouac spent a summer in Big Sur. His novel based on the experience, Big Sur, was published in 1962.
  • Richard Brautigan wrote a book about his experiences in Big Sur, A Confederate General From Big Sur, published in 1964.
  • A 1971 film, Celebration at Big Sur, starring Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Joni Mitchell, documented the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival at the Esalen Institute.
  • In 1975 Hollywood producer Lawrence Spector used the profits from his film Easy Rider to build a luxury resort in Big Sur on acreage purchased from the Post family, descendants of the original homesteaders.
  • The Beach Boys have a song on their 1973 album Holland about Big Sur, and 2 other songs on the album deal with the environs of Big Sur.
  • Red House Painters have a song named "Revelation Big Sur" on their 1996 album Songs For a Blue Guitar.
  • Buckethead has a song titled "Big Sur Moon" on his 1998 album Colma.
  • The Red Hot Chili Peppers mention Big Sur in their 1999 single "Road Trippin' ".
  • Mason Jennings has a song named "Big Sur" on his self-titled 2000 album.
  • The Thrills have a song named "Big Sur" on their 2003 debut album, So Much for the City.
  • John Adams composed an electric violin concerto in 2003 for the Los Angeles Philharmonic titled The Dharma at Big Sur.
  • Jack Black married Tanya Haden in Big Sur in 2006.
  • Ashley Jensen was married in Big Sur in 2007.
  • "Good Morning America" news anchor Kate Snow was also married here.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Big Sur.


Suggested reading

  • Big Sur, Jack Kerouac, Penguin Books, Reprint edition (1962, reprinted 1992), 256 pages, ISBN 0-14-016812-5
  • Big Sur: A Battle for the Wilderness 1869-1981, John Woolfenden, The Boxwood Press (1981), 143 pages, ISBN 0-910286-87-6
  • Big Sur: Images of America, Jeff Norman, Big Sur Historical Society, Arcadia Publishing (2004), 128 pages, ISBN 0-7385-2913-3
  • Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Henry Miller, New Directions Publishing Corp (1957), 404 pages, ISBN 0-8112-0107-4
  • Hiking & Backpacking Big Sur, Analise Elliott, Wilderness Press (2005), 322 pages, ISBN 0-89997-326-4
  • The Natural History of Big Sur, Paul Henson and Donald J. Usner, University of California Press (1993), 416 pages, ISBN 0-520-20510-3
  • A Wild Coast and Lonely: Big Sur Pioneers, Rosalind Sharpe Wall, Wide World Publishing, (1989, reprinted April 1992), 264 pages, ISBN 0-933174-83-7

References

  1. ^ Henson, Paul and Usner, Donald. The Natural History of Big Sur 1993, University of California Press; Berkeley, California; page 11
  2. ^ Elliott, Analise. Hiking & Backpacking Big Sur 2005, Wilderness Press; Berkeley, California; page 21
  3. ^ Henson and Usner, pages 269-270
  4. ^ Ibid., page 272
  5. ^ Ibid., pages 264-267
  6. ^ Davis, Kathleen. California Department of Parks & Recreation website [1]
  7. ^ Woolfenden, John. Big Sur: A Battle for the Wilderness 1869-1981 1981, The Boxwood Press; Pacific Grove; page 72
  8. ^ Wall, Rosalind Sharpe. A Wild Coast and Lonely: Big Sur Pioneers 1989, Wide World Publishing; San Carlos, California; pages 126-130
  9. ^ Eliott, page 24
  10. ^ Henson and Usner, page 328; Woolfenden, page 64
  11. ^ National Advertising Co. v. County of Monterey, 211 Cal.App.2d 375, 1962
  12. ^ Miller, Henry. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch 1957, New Directions Publishing; New York; page 45
  13. ^ Henson and Usner, pages 33-35
  14. ^ Woolfenden, page 10
  15. ^ Big Sur Chamber of Commerce website [2]

36°06′27″N 121°37′33″W / 36.10750°N 121.62583°W / 36.10750; -121.62583

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