More than a century on the Big Sur coast
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A month before it burned, I turned seventy at the cabin and took my grandchildren up Plaskett Ridge to a swing that hangs out over the ocean. That swing is now 875 feet inside the fire. The cabin is 820 feet outside it.
From Mabel’s pen
A day's ride up a steep mountain trail with two companions, to lie beneath the willows at Wesley's spring — a place that appears on no map. We found the ground: Wesley Plaskett's section in the Oat Hills, inland from Jolon.
Family spotlight
Ann "Nancy" Price Barnes. Married Leonard Barnes circa 1790 in Frederick County, Maryland. May be daughter of Mordecai and Hyatt Price, Quakers. Witnesses to her wedding included William Barnes but no one of the Price surname, suggesting this was not a Quaker-sanctioned wedding.…
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Julia Pfeiffer shod horses, plowed, hayed, roped and rode with any man on the coast — and better than most.
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The mail went through: Plaskett boys swimming icy rivers with the pack mule rolling in the current.
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Phillip Dolan trusted no bank. When he died, they found a thousand dollars sewn in his old coat.
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Captain Joseph Clark's whaling station made San Simeon a town of 200 before the Hearsts ever came.
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Burned out at five, expert by eight — Tony Vasquez was born to the saddle in the Palo Corona hills.
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Consumption came to the Lopez house by the sea and took four of them, one after another.
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