Lawson McKern

Homesteaded 160 acres on the bank of the Nacimiento River, 12 miles west of Jolon, in the early 1890s, and built a cabin there. He was killed when a runaway team dragged a sharp-toothed harrow over him. The place kept his name long after him: it passed to Reil Dani and then to Ed Sans, was sold to Hearst, and lies today within Fort Hunter Liggett. Byron and Martha Plaskett named a son Lawson McKern Plaskett in 1883, which places the two families in contact before the homestead was ever filed. His name survives on the land: a sign reading “McKerns Road, Locked Gate 2” still stands at the top of South Coast Ridge Road, where Nacimiento-Fergusson Road crosses the summit.