Here, in vignettes drawn from the work of Coastside historian June Morrall, is a glimpse of the Coastside's colorful past.
Herr Wagner, a San Francisco magazine publisher and self-styled Bohemian, planned around the turn of the century to foster the arts as well a business by creating an artist's colony with an arts and crafts college. He envisioned a self-contained community with a bakery, school and general store, located on the division of the huge land grant of rancher Francisco Guerrero. Cozy cottages with rock fireplaces would be rented by writers, poets or musicians - and no one else.
At the time, the Ocean Shore Railroad connected San Francisco and the Coastside. Poet Joaquin Miller, a friend of Wagner, was known to savor the view of the Pacific on his train ride south. As a favor to Wagner, Miller strategically planted a Sequoia gigantis in honor of the new artist's colony. But, foreshadowing the future, it withered and died shortly thereafter.
When the railroad folded around 1922, Wagner's dreams folded with it. Instead, during Prohibition, Montara's lonely beaches became ideal landing spots for whiskey bootleggers.
But Wagner's dreams didn't die completely. Ironically, with Prohibition a thing of the distant past, artists, writers, photographers, thespians and musicians live and find inspiration in Montara today.
Wienke Street in Moss beach recalls J.F. Wienke, who in 1881 fell in love at first sight with the tall cliffs, white beaches and tranquility in the spot he named Moss Beach after the moss clinging to the rocks near his hotel. Here, he envisioned a resort for city-weary San Franciscans - a vision helped along by his own romantic honeymoon spent there.
But the closest the town got to those dreams was the rickety turn-of-the-century "Reefs" joint owned by Charlie Nye and its famous clientele. Befor it was destroyed by a tidal wave, author Jack London and horticulturist Luther Burbank were among its visitors.
During Prohibition, silent film stars and politicians gathered at the roadhouse, built in 1917 and known today as the Moss Beach Distillery. Booze was slipped to land in the secluded cove beneath the place and laboriously dragged up the steep cliffs to waiting autos - or to the bar upstairs.
Around this time, a murder occurred near the Distillery that still haunts restaurant patrons today. Many claim to have seen the tormented, restless apparition of the celebrated Blue Lady wandering the windswept cliffs.
Formerly Granada, this town was the site of a fabulous resort planned by the Ocean Shore Railroad. Lot sales rose along with pictures of casinos, hotels, bathing pavilions. The first artichokes grown for commercial purposes sprouted there.
Architect D. H. Burnham designed the town's wandering, often-interrupted streets which today baffle visitors but delight residents with their uniqueness.
By 1916, trains were still pouring forth enthusiastic visitors to Granada. But the town dwindled by the early 1920s, and lived quietly until recent years.
Following concerns raised 50 years earlier of foreign powers invading by sea, long-range artillery and anti-aircraft guns were mounted long the coast during World War II. The huge dish at the Pillar Point Tracking Station is a silent reminder of those days, though today it only tracks friendly military craft, NASA space shuttles, or communications satellite launches for private companies.
Pillar Point's headland earned the name "Corral de Tierra" from the Spanish and "Snakes Head" from the Native Americans before them. It may have earned its current name inauspiciously after Prince, developer Frank Brophy's dog. Brophy built the Hotel Princeton that was closed down during Prohibition. Then, the tiny town needed at least three piers to handle the incoming booze. One Princeton legend suggests that escape artist Harry Houdini did some underwater sleuthing there for the U.S. Treasury Department.
Laid out in 1908 to serve visitors who rode the Ocean Shore Railroad south from San Francisco, Princeton is famous for its streets named after respected colleges.
At one point, Indians and sea dogs loaded steamers off the tiny wharf called Amesport. Novelist Peter B. Kyne immortalized it in his 1911 work, "Captain Scraggs and the Green Pea Pirates." But seeking a better image, the Ocean Shore Railroad hastily renamed it Miramar.
The luxurious Palace Miramar Hotel with its indoor saltwater plunge, once faced the sea there. Mussels were dug on the beach and taken straight to restaurant tables. Nearby stood the Miramar Beach Inn, built by a redheaded madam on money loaned by an admirer. The luckless lover, though, had to stand by while she settled upstairs with her carpenter companion, who had crafted nooks and crannies downstairs for bootlegged booze. From the Miramar's lofty windows, both rumrunners and the law could be spotted and dealt with accordingly.
First called San Benito, then renamed Spanish Town after the Spanish influx of the 1860s, and finally dubbed after the crescent-shaped bay just north of town, Half Moon Bay was and is a cultural melting pot.
Spanish Town was founded by Tiburcio Vasquez, who sought refuge during the Mexican War on his secluded Coastside land grant along with fellow countrymen on their grants. They included the Miramontes clan, from whom Scottish-born James Johnston bought the land upon which he built his dream house. Unbeknownst to him at the time, it is being renovated today, for posterity.
From Italy came the general-store moguls, the Boitanos and Debenedettis. From the Portuguese Azores came the Cunhas, who helped establish the Chamarita, the annual Portuguese festival. The Irish Quinlans became the town blacksmiths and the Jewish Levy brothers arrived from Alsace Lorraine to establish a chain of stores on the coastside.
Today, town streets honor the names of these founding fathers. Their stories can be pondered in the tiny jail museum on Johnston Street that holds archives, old photos, and the hub of local history.
San Gregorio: Farm village
The hamlet of San Gregorio was born at a crossroads in the 1860s. Reputedly, newspapers from the Civil War lined the walls of the San Gregorio House hotel.
In the village saloons, farmers swapped tales of grizzly bear encounters or read the San Francisco papers delivered each month. The geographically isolated San Gregiorio residents showed pioneer resourcefulness with "mud rides" to the beach in the wet winters of the 1870s. Back then, to "go to the city" meant to travel to Pescadero.
Living history can be experienced by visiting the San Gregorio General Store. From its potbelly stoves around which neighbors sit, to its old-fashioned glass and kitchen wares, it looks the same as it did in the 1930s. Shelves of books and clothes, and weekend acoustic music, help insure that it's the hub of its rural community in much the same old-fashioned way.
La Honda: Mountain retreat
Loggers laid the foundation for La Honda in the majestic redwood forests, 10 miles east of the sea in the mid-1800s. Its first post office opened in 1876 and a school district formed in 1874, though school was already in session - average daily attendance at La Honda School for 1872 was recorded at six students.
Hotels cropped up though fire would bring many of them down, including the La Honda Hotel, built in 1878 and burned in 1917. In the early 1900s, the town was a vacation spot for city-weary San Franciscans.
Its innocuous grocery store, built around 1851 by John L. Sears, was later dubbed the "Bandit-Built-Store" when employees Jim and Bob Younger were found to be connected with the James Boys gang of robbers from Chicago. It burned in 1952 and was rebuilt, and is now the more respectable Pioneer Market.
In the 1960s, La Honda was home to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey and young kindred spirits who later crossed the country in a psychedelic bus as the freewheeling Merry Pranksters.
Pescadero: Fishing spot
Excellent trout fishing helped establish Pescadero as a seaside resort by the 1890s. Indeed, it was reportedly bigger 100 years ago than it is today.
Building blocks in Pescadero's history include the first frame house, erected in town in 1851. Or the one-ton cheese donated by the Steele family to the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. Or the generous, interest-free loans made by general store owner J.C. Williamson. Or the arrival of the Duarte family who opened a tavern. Though fire destroyed it in the 1920s, the original bar was saved. It stands in the modern-day Duarte's Tavern, still family-owned, generations later.
Visitors who braved the grueling mountain stage crossing to Pescadero found vine-covered lodgings in Sarah Swanton's hotel and happy "gem" hunting at Pebble Beach. Today, after a more comfortable car crossing, visitors can still find quaint cottages along Pescadero's main streest and gems in the form of U-pick berries at Phipp's Ranch. Visitors can also see Pescadero Community Church which, built in 1867 in the classical revival style, is the oldest surviving Protestant church on the Peninsula and was declared a state historical landmark in 1984.