More than a century on the Big Sur coast
mabel article
Her earliest known piece, under the pen name Belinda Brown - eighteen years before Coast Trails. How Cox's Hole became Pacific Valley, who named it, and the July the family left Fresno because San Joaquin was getting “too thickly settled”.
From Mabel’s pen
Old-timers rode from Gorda to Cambria in a day, saddling before dawn — now the Exotic Gardens greet tourists at the trail's end.
Family spotlight
Victor Girard Kleinberger (1880–1954) — "Victor Girard" — was a Persian-rug salesman from Kentucky who became one of California's most audacious land promoters. In 1922 he bought 2,886 acres at the west end of the San Fernando Valley, cut them into some 6,000 lots, and named the town Girard after h…
mabel poem
Airplanes over the valley 'like giant birds of commerce' — Mabel watches the modern age arrive on wings.
gold mines
Built by William Lucas Plaskett about 1885 and turned by a water wheel on the creek, the family arrastra ground the Western Star's gold ore — and its timbers, iron and basin are still there.
place history
A hike up the Mill Creek Trail toward the old Sans sawmill site — the canyon where Mabel Sans Plaskett grew up.
place history
Sixty-some years after Mabel sent her readers to Jade Cove, her great-grandson climbed down the rope to the same tideline — and the green stone is still there.
place history
Off Sand Dollar Beach a white-crowned sea stack carries the family's name on every chart of the coast. Bill and Kim photographed it from ridge, point, and sand.
story
Ed Plaskett and his brothers built a way to the top of Plaskett Rock — where centuries of seagulls had left a crown of first-rate fertilizer, free for the scraping.
235 stories · 1762 family members & friends · 678 places — and the home page changes every few days. Come back soon.
Pick what you want to hear about. You will only ever be emailed about the things you tick.