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
Giant-strong Henry Melville came to Los Burros for the gold — and left stories they still tell: robbers thrown from his cabin, a loaded wagon lifted bare-handed.
Family spotlight
Whaling captain who commanded 10 voyages from Nantucket and New Bedford. Ships: Martha, Independence, Pacific, Japan, Clarkson, Napoleon, Timoleon. Married Nancy Pollard, sister of Captain George Pollard Jr. of the Essex (the ship sunk by a whale that inspired Moby Dick). Portrait hangs in Nantucket…
mabel article
Behind a mosaic sign south of Lucia, white-robed monks keep medieval silence on 600 acres above the Pacific.
mabel article
In the Ventanas — 'the Windows' — below Pico Blanco, the Boy Scouts made a summer camp of the old Harlan country.
mabel article
A shelf of level land a thousand feet above the sea: the Dani place, where Gabriel Dani built a one-armed empire and Lucia got her name.
mabel article
Eccentric Phillip Dolan trusted no bank, drove his cattle to Monterey alone, and left a thousand dollars sewn in an old coat.
mabel article
Her father in full: Edward R. Sans, farmer, lumberman, explorer — Nevada's 'Coyote Man,' the government's legendary predator hunter.
mabel article
Old-timers rode from Gorda to Cambria in a day, saddling before dawn — now the Exotic Gardens greet tourists at the trail's end.
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