I walk in a neighborhood where the homes border a golf course. The streets are all named for famous golf resorts. Pebble Beach is in Monterey County, California. I do not play golf, but I got a free golf lesson once. I was surprised at how unnatural the stance is. It really is uncomfortable. I have played tennis, racquetball and pickleball. The way you have to stand and swing at the ball seem completely natural to me. But golf is completely different. I guess the top golfers deserve all the accolades they receive because what they do is really difficult. I was at Pebble Beach in 2016. I took a 2-week trip up and down the California coast and stopped at celebrity chef Roy Yamaguchi’s Hawaiian fusion restaurant at The Inn at Spanish Bay on the famous 17-Mile Drive. The food melted in your mouth, and the view was spectacular. Let’s find out more about Pebble Beach.
According to Wikipedia, Pebble Beach is an unincorporated community on the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey County, California. The small coastal residential community of mostly single-family homes is also notable as a resort destination, and the home of the golf courses of Cypress Point Club, Monterey Peninsula Country Club and Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The Pebble Beach Golf Links, The Inn at Spanish Bay, The Lodge at Pebble Beach and four of the eight golf courses inside the Pebble Beach community are among the local assets owned by the Pebble Beach Co. Residents pay road fees for maintenance as well as Monterey County property taxes. Application of the property tax revenues is the realm of the Pebble Beach Community Services District, a public agency that is independent of local private facilities, e.g., golf courses, with an elected board of directors that manages essential functions including fire protection and emergency medical services, supplemental law enforcement, wastewater collection and treatment, recycled water distribution and garbage collection, disposal and recycling. The community's post office is named Pebble Beach, as is its identity; whereas, the U.S. Census Bureau aggregates census returns from Pebble Beach as part of the larger census-designated place of Del Monte Forest. However, residents and visitors associate and identify with the name Pebble Beach; boundaries of the Del Monte Forest extend outside of the Pebble Beach community boundaries encompassing a larger forest area that comprises the wooded parts of Monterey Peninsula.
Area open space is partly administered by the Del Monte Forest Conservancy, a nonprofit organization designated by Monterey County and the California Coastal Commission to acquire and manage certain properties by conservation easement and, as well, by fee title. The Conservancy is governed by a self-elected volunteer board of up to 12 members working with a small part-time group of contractors and volunteers to preserve the open space within the Del Monte Forest and non-forested sites of Pebble Beach. All board members must be property owners and residents of Pebble Beach.
Pebble Beach lies at sea level, its zip code is 93953, and the community is inside area code is 831.
History
The name Pebble Beach was originally given to a rocky cove and beach strand, a prominent coastal segment of the Rancho Pescadero Mexican land grant that had been awarded to Fabián Barreto in 1836. Barreto died, and the land went through several owners. In the 1850s, Chinese immigrants formed a series of fishing settlements along Carmel Bay including one at Stillwater Cove, next to Pebble Beach. They collected abalone and various fish. In 1860, David Jack bought the Mexican land grant, then sold it in 1880 to the Pacific Improvement Co., a consortium of The Big Four "railroad barons."
By 1892, the Pacific Improvement Co. or PIC laid out a scenic road that they called the 17-Mile Drive, meandering along the beaches and among the forested areas between Monterey and Carmel. The drive was offered as a pleasure excursion to guests of the PIC-owned Hotel Del Monte, and it was intended to attract wealthy buyers of large and scenic residential plots on PIC land. Sightseers riding horses or carriages along the 17-Mile Drive sometimes stopped at Pebble Beach to pick up agate and other stones polished smooth by the waves, and they commented on a few unusual tree formations known as the Witch Tree and the Ostrich Tree — the latter formed by two trees leaning on each other. At that time, the Chinese fishing community continued in existence despite mounting anti-Chinese sentiment among Monterey residents of European heritage. At roadside stands, Chinese-American girls sold shells and polished pebbles to tourists. In the 1900s, the automobile began replacing horses on 17-Mile Drive, and by 1907 there were only automobiles. Adverse sentiments by local non-Chinese towards the Chinese fisherman and villagers of Pebble Beach was ironic in view of the vital contribution Chinese laborers made to the development of the Central Pacific Railroad, the fundamental fount of capital for the "Big Four," founders of PIC.
In 1908, architect Lewis P. Hobart was hired by PIC manager A.D. Shepard to design the Pebble Beach Lodge, a rustic log-cabin-style, one-story inn completed by 1909. The rambling lodge, featuring private patio nooks and a wide pergola made of local logs, was positioned halfway along 17-Mile Drive, overlooking Pebble Beach. The great hall or assembly room was 35 by 70 feet wide and was flanked by massive fireplaces at each end. A tavern and kitchen supplied food and drink, and later, cottages could be rented for overnight guests. Operated under the same management as the Hotel Del Monte, food service was available at all hours, including fresh local abalone chowder. The lodge was built as the community center for the wealthy residents of the Del Monte Forest, and was popular as a rest stop for 17-Mile Drive motorists. Samuel Finley Brown Morse — a distant cousin to Morse code inventor Samuel F.B. Morse — was hired in the 1910s to manage the PIC. In 1916, Morse convinced the PIC to create a golf course at the edge of Pebble Beach and Stillwater Cove. The lodge burned down on December 17, 1917, while the course was under construction, and a completely different structure replaced it: the Del Monte Lodge. Hobart worked with Clarence Tantau to create a luxurious multistory hotel, and Hobart designed a signature "Roman Plunge" pool to the east of the hotel. The golf course and the new lodge held a grand opening on February 22, 1919.
Morse formed the Del Monte Properties Co. on February 27, 1919, and acquired the extensive holdings of the PIC, which included the Del Monte Forest, the Del Monte Lodge and the Hotel Del Monte. Morse brought his son on board as president in 1948. The lodge was expanded with offices and a shopping arcade. In 1954, Morse's son-in-law was named president of the Del Monte Properties Co.
Samuel Finley Brown Morse died in 1969. Alfred Gawthrop Jr. served as chairman of Del Monte Properties through the 1970s. On March 30, 1977, the Del Monte Properties Co. was reincorporated as the Pebble Beach Corp. The Del Monte Lodge was renamed the Lodge at Pebble Beach.
In May 1979, 20th Century Fox, later bought by Marvin Davis, purchased the Pebble Beach Corp. When the film company was sold to Rupert Murdoch in 1985, Davis kept several company assets not directly related to the film and TV industry, including Pebble Beach Co. and Aspen Skiing Co.
In 1990 Davis sold the Pebble Beach Co. to the Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani, who made it a subsidiary of the Japanese resort company Taiheiyo Club Inc. under a holding company called the Lone Cypress Co. Isutani was investigated by the FBI in the early 1990s for money laundering. Isutani's $341M loss taken on the sale of Pebble Beach was cited as an example.
In 1999 the Pebble Beach Co. was acquired from Lone Cypress by an investor group led by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer and Peter Ueberroth. In 2000, the company initiated Measure A, a controversial development proposal. Eastwood appeared in a $1 million legal advertising campaign urging voters to pass Measure A. In 2006, the plan went before the California Coastal Commission for approval. On June 14, 2007, the plan was submitted again. Commissioner Sara Wan called it "wholesale destruction of the environment," and Measure A was denied in an 8 to 4 vote.
The famous landmark, known as the "Witch Tree," stood for decades at Pescadero Point until it fell during a storm on January 14, 1964. It was sometimes used as scenic background in movies and television. It was displayed as part of the coast of Italy in the 1951 movie “Mr. Imperium,” with Lana Turner, Ezio Pinza, Majorie Main and Barry Sullivan. That tree was also part of the background in an early scene from the 1956 movie “Julie,” featuring Doris Day, while she was fleeing from her psychopathic husband, played by Louis Jourdan.
The Pescadero "Ghost Tree" gave its name to an extreme surfing location known to have storm waves as large as 60 feet high. Effective 2009, the surf break of Ghost Tree became effectively off limits, the result of a decision by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that personal watercraft — which were a virtual necessity for the tow-in only surf spot — were no longer permitted in specified waters of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Geography
Pebble Beach is in Monterey County on the Monterey Peninsula at 36°33′59″N121°56′48″W. It is bordered by Carmel-by-the-Sea to the south, Pacific Grove to the north, the City of Monterey to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Big Sur is about a 40-mile drive south on scenic Highway 1. Cypress Point in Pebble Beach is the westernmost landfall in Southern California; the dividing line between the north and south portions of the state coastline is situated at the center of the Monterey Bay shoreline near Moss Landing. Santa Cruz and San Francisco are about 45 and 120 miles (190 km) to the north, respectively.
Geology
Pebble Beach owes much of its picturesque qualities to the granitic rock outcroppings, stacks and small islets visible along the coast, these comprising the local portion of the federal California Coastal National Monument, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management. These are characteristic of the Salinian Block, a geologic province which runs from the Baja California Peninsula and up through California west of the San Andreas Fault. The historically inactive Fanshell Beach Fault, which exits land near Fanshell Beach in Pebble Beach, creates a divide between nearby Cypress Point and northerly Spyglass Hill that is visually appreciable. Native Monterey Cypress forest grows on the southwesterly side of Fanshell Beach Fault; a direct relationship between the underlying rock base and soils and the cypress cover type has not been confirmed.
Golf
Pebble Beach has seven 18-hole golf courses, and one 9-hole course. Pebble Beach Golf Links, The Links at Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill and Peter Hay Golf Course are owned by Pebble Beach Co. and are all public courses. Poppy Hills is also a public course. Private courses located at Pebble Beach are Cypress Point Club and the private Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s two courses, the Dunes Course and the Shore Course. Pebble Beach Co. also owns Del Monte Golf Course a few miles away in Monterey, which is the oldest continuously operating course in the western United States.
Several of these courses are widely celebrated, especially Pebble Beach Golf Links. Designed by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, it is the most famous course in the western United States and — along with Augusta National — remains one of only two courses to have ever beaten Pine Valley Golf Club to the top spot in Golf Digest’s biennial list of America's 100 greatest courses. Pebble Beach Golf Links was the site of the U.S. Open in 1972, 1982, 1992, 2000, 2010 and 2019. The course is set to host the tournament again in 2027.
The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am — formerly known as the Crosby Clambake — is held on three of the courses annually in February. The tournament began in 1937 at Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, where it was last played in 1942. After World War II, it moved to Pebble Beach in 1947, and has continued annually since.
The Pebble Beach golf resort partnered with IBM in 2017 to use the artificial intelligence Watson as a live concierge embedded in a mobile app. Watson was used to guide visitors around the resort.
Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is an automotive charitable event held each year on the Pebble Beach Golf links, considered the most prestigious event of its kind. It is the finale of Monterey Car Week held in August every year. A Concours d’Elegance — French for "a competition of elegance" — is an event open to both prewar and postwar collector cars in which they are judged for authenticity, function, history and style. Classes are commonly arranged by type, marque or manufacturer, coachbuilder or bodymaker, country of origin or time period. Judges select first-, second, and third-place finishers for each class in the event, and the judges confer the "Best of Show" award on one car from the group of first-place winners. In addition, a group of honorary judges — individuals who have made significant contributions to the automotive industry or motorsports — award a number of subjective awards to recognize standout vehicles regardless of class ribbons, as well as memorial awards created to honor specific automotive industry personages. Approximately 15,000 spectators attend the event.
Other features
Pebble Beach has few businesses, such as at-home cottage industries, apart from those owned by the Pebble Beach Co. — except the golf courses, a private school and a deli — and no sidewalks. Most of the very expensive houses are obscured from view behind old-growth trees. It is quiet, secluded and often experiences foggy weather, which occurs frequently on the Monterey Peninsula in general, but especially there because of the area adjoining the open ocean.
Pebble Beach is a gated community but differs from most gated communities. There is an entrance fee for which The Pebble Beach Co. charges $10.50 per vehicle from tourists driving along the 17-Mile Drive. Pebble Beach residents are issued small license plate badges that are attached near their cars' license plates or in their windshields to avoid paying the tourist fee.
In 2014 and airing in 2017, Pebble Beach was the location for the HBO show “Big Little Lies,” a drama which showcases relationships between high-income status individuals based on the book of the same name.
In popular culture
On the “Star Trek: Voyager” episode "Inside Man", the doctor played by Robert Picardo lists Pebble Beach as an option to play golf on the holodeck.
On the TV show “The Golden Girls,” Sophia Petrillo claims that she had the chance to marry Bing Crosby, and if she had, she would be a wealthy widow with her own place in Pebble Beach.
17-Mile Drive History
In 1602 the Monterey Peninsula was mapped by Spanish explorers. By 1840 the area now called Pebble Beach was a rancho left to widow Carmen Garcia Barreto Maderiaga Maria by her husband. She sold the 4,000-acre property for $500 in 1846. Ownership passed several times until 1862 when the property was purchased at auction for 12 cents an acre by David Jacks. At the time, the area was called "Stillwater Cove." Jacks leased the land to the "China Man Hop Co.," a small village with a population of about 30 Chinese fishermen living in shacks built upon the rocky shoreline.
In 1880, Jacks sold the land to the Pacific Improvement Co. or PIC, a consortium of The Big Four railroad barons: Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkis, Collis Huntington and Leland Stanford. By 1892, the PIC laid out a scenic road that they called the 17-Mile Drive, meandering along the beaches and among the forested areas between Monterey and Carmel. Within short order, the area became a tourist destination with the building of the Hotel Del Monte.
The hotel was the starting and finishing point for 17-Mile Drive, originally called the 18-Mile Drive by hotel operators. The drive was offered as a pleasure excursion to hotel guests and was intended to attract wealthy buyers of large and scenic residential plots on PIC land. Sightseers riding horses or carriages along the 17-Mile Drive sometimes stopped at Pebble Beach to pick up agate and other stones polished smooth by the waves, and they commented on a few unusual tree formations known as the Witch Tree and the Ostrich Tree — the latter formed by two trees leaning on each other. At that time, the Chinese fishing community continued in existence despite mounting anti-Chinese sentiment among Monterey residents of European heritage. At roadside stands, Chinese-American girls sold shells and polished pebbles to tourists. In the 1900s, the automobile began replacing horses on 17-Mile Drive, and by 1907 there were only automobiles. The drive featured the region's historical sites, forests and on to the coastal scenic attractions in the Hotel Del Monte Park Reservation, as it was known at the time.
Drawn by six bay horses, President Benjamin Harrison took the coach ride through the reservation in 1891. The coach was adorned with the national colors "and the harness on the horses was lined with bunting and roses as far as possible." In the newspaper The Monterey Cypress, President Harrison noted "This is a lovely spot. I only wish I could stay here a week." In 1887, the hotel was destroyed by fire and replaced with a new structure. The Del Monte Golf Course was added in 1897 as part of the hotel and is today the oldest operating course west of the Mississippi. In 1919, the Los Angeles Times called the 17-Mile Drive one of the "great wonders of the world."
On February 27, 1919, Samuel Finley Brown Morse formed the Del Monte Properties Co. and acquired the extensive holdings of the Pacific Improvement Co., which included the Del Monte Forest and the Hotel Del Monte. Another fire destroyed that structure and was replaced by a third hotel. This new hotel was finished in 1926 and requisitioned by the United States government as a training facility in 1942. After World War II, the Hotel del Monte building and surrounding grounds were acquired by the United States Navy for its Naval Postgraduate School, and the building was renamed Herrmann Hall. The Del Monte Forest, including the famed 17-Mile Drive, remained under the ownership of Del Monte Properties Co.
17-Mile Drive route description
At the north end, a portion of the early route through Pacific Grove begins at the intersection of Del Monte Blvd and Esplanade Street. The famous portion of 17-Mile Drive then begins a few miles south of this point. The crossing of Highway 68 or Holman Highway/Sunset Drive and 17-Mile Drive marks the entrance to Pebble Beach.
From the Sunset Drive/Pacific Grove gate, the drive runs inland past Spanish Bay, then adjacent to beaches and up into the coastal hills, providing scenic viewpoints. The route allows for self-directed travel and stopping, with frequent turnouts along the roadway in many locations along the route. Without stops, it takes a minimum of 20 minutes to reach Carmel. The numerous turnouts allow stopping to take pictures or getting out to stroll along the ocean or among the trees. Visitors receive a map that points out some of the more scenic spots. In addition, a red-dashed line is marked in the center of the main road to guide visitors and help prevent them from venturing into the adjacent neighborhood streets.
The road provides vistas of golf courses including Spyglass Hill, Cypress Point and Pebble Beach. After reaching Carmel Way and the exit to Carmel, the 17-Mile Drive then heads northeast to the Highway 68/Highway 1 interchange, where one can exit, or continue to loop along the higher vistas of 17-Mile Drive, some of which offer views from more than 600 feet above sea-level. The full loop will take you back to the Pacific Grove Gate at Sunset Drive — a distance of 17 miles.
The only services open to the public in Pebble Beach — gas stations, restrooms, restaurants — are at the Inn at Spanish Bay and at the Lodge at Pebble Beach; plenty of comfortable and scenic spots are available to picnic. Spyglass Hill and Poppy Hills golf courses also have restaurants open to the public.
To drive the section of the road within the Pebble Beach gated community, there is an entrance fee requirement of $10.50 as of April 1, 2019, except for travelers on bicycles. Visitors can recoup the toll if they dine or shop within the community. Residents are not required to pay this fee, as they pay an annual fee, nor are guests if they are granted access in advance of their visit by a resident or through hotel/restaurant reservations. Motorcycles are not allowed.
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