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
From Indian shell beds to a 4,000-acre cattle empire — the Mansfields, who came to Pacific Valley when the lilac grew as tall as trees.
Family spotlight
Elizabeth Alderson was born in Yorkshire, England in February 1805, to poor parents. Her father lived to 90 years, her mother to 70. She made her own way through honest labor, employed by one family as a servant for 12 years. She emigrated to the United States in 1853. Mother of two children: Captai…
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She picked her own birthday: the day San Francisco shook to pieces in 1906.
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From 1890 Byron Plaskett carried the mail from Jolon Road twice a week, rain or shine, with a string of up to ten horses.
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Three Plaskett brothers built St. Luke's at Jolon in 1884 — and it still stands.
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Joe and Dave Moro of Chalk Peak worked the Sans sawmill for ten years — two of the last Jolon Indians.
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Winter in Pacific Valley meant bears in the stock pens and cougars in the hills.
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'A happier more carefree childhood cannot be imagined' — Mabel on growing up wild on Mill Creek.
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