story
Jerry Lewis's Yacht Pussycat Wrecked Near Gorda
The 1966 Lopez Point wreck and the debris remembered at Willow Creek — what the record proves, and what a ten-year-old on the beach saw.
Stories
True stories of the Plasketts and their neighbors — bears and gold, shipwrecks and weddings — drawn from letters, newspapers, and family memory.
story
The Baronettes: An Acadian Origin, and a Signer Who Was Not Ours
The family says Sarah Barnes came of French Acadians expelled in 1755, and that her mother was first cousin to a signer of the Declaration. One of those is likely; the other does not survive checking.
place history
Before Big Sur: The Mendocino Years
Fifteen years before Pacific Valley, William Lucas Plaskett rehearsed his dream in Anderson Valley — where the family named a daughter Mendocina, left their name on a mountain meadow that still carries it, and stopped twelve feet short of a different life.
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
Riding with Ed Culver: When the Mailman Was the Coast
Mabel wrote him up in 1961: the mailman who filled grocery orders and played bass viol in the symphony. Her grandson rode in his van to Monterey — back when the coast ran on trust.
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.
story
The Guano Harvest: Farming the Top of Plaskett Rock
Ed Plaskett and his brothers built a way to the top of Plaskett Rock — where centuries of seagulls had left a crown of first-rate fertilizer, free for the scraping.
place history
Plaskett Rock: The Family Name, Written in Stone
Off Sand Dollar Beach a white-crowned sea stack carries the family's name on every chart of the coast. Bill and Kim photographed it from ridge, point, and sand.
place history
Jade Cove Today: Hunting Green Stone on Mabel's Coast
Sixty-some years after Mabel sent her readers to Jade Cove, her great-grandson climbed down the rope to the same tideline — and the green stone is still there.
gold mines
Twelve Feet from Fortune
The most told Plaskett story of all: the Nevada silver tunnel sold twelve feet short of the Comstock Lode.
gold mines
The Profitable Mine That Led to Loss
The Kings River mine paid handsomely — and financed the venture that lost it all.
place history
Return to Mill Creek: Walking Mabel's Childhood Home
A hike up the Mill Creek Trail toward the old Sans sawmill site — the canyon where Mabel Sans Plaskett grew up.
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