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
Portolá camped there in 1769; a century later Jolon was the thriving crossroads of the Camino Real — saloons, hotels, and fiestas three days long.
Family spotlight
Widow Margaret Lucas Margerum, married William Plaskett of Whitehaven on October 29, 1734. The Lucas family was among those listed in the Whitehaven church records alongside the Plasketts. Her surname "Lucas" became the middle name passed down through generations to William Lucas Plaskett (1818-1…
mabel article
Grandpa Deetjen's hand-built Norwegian inn at Castro Canyon — rustic rooms, record concerts, and the 'Master Builder' himself.
mabel article
Who was Julia Pfeiffer Burns? The ranchwoman who shod horses and roped with the best — remembered in the park at Saddle Rock.
mabel article
Cabrillo's 'Bay of Sardines,' a whaling captain's store, the Hearst boys at play — four centuries of San Simeon in one telling. Sebastian's Store was 102 years old when she wrote it.
mabel article
Hunted to near-extinction for their fur, the sea otters were rediscovered off Bixby Bridge in 1938 — and by Mabel's day were thriving down the whole coast.
mabel article
The wrecks of the Los Angeles and the Ventura — 150 victims clinging to rigging, salvaged linens dressing the coast ranches — made the case for Point Sur's light.
mabel article
A 2007 appreciation of Mabel herself — 'Belle' Sans Plaskett with her horse Cleo — by historian Susan Raycraft.
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