The Plaskett Family

More than a century on the Big Sur coast

Places

Wild Cattle Creek

A creek on the Big Sur coast between Prewitt Creek and Mill Creek, named for the wild cattle that ranged this country. Mabel Plaskett’s Cabrillo Highway drive passes it just north of Pacific Valley. In 1933 a construction camp for the new coast road stood here, with an emergency school for the road workers’ children; Mrs. Roy Mitchell held land at the creek’s head.

Stories set here

place history

The Schoolteacher Brides of Pacific Valley

The county kept sending young women to teach the coast's children — and the Plaskett boys kept marrying them. How two brothers married two sisters, and the schoolhouse became the town.

story

The Rattlesnake on the Mail Trail

A rattlesnake struck Ed Plaskett's horse on the mountain mail trail. The horse left the county. The story has a happy ending — eventually.

mabel article

History of Coast Schools Concluded

Part two: Pacific Valley School — kept since 1880 on the east side of the highway at Plaskett Creek — and the teachers who came to the edge of the world.

mabel article

Lumber Mills Once Buzzed in the Lucias

Where the Nacimiento road tops the divide, Mill Creek springs to life — and once powered the sawmills of the Lucias, including her father's.

The people of Wild Cattle Creek

Everyone the family archive records in the story of this place. Descendants: if one of these is yours, we’d love to hear from you.