Return to Mill Creek: Walking Mabel's Childhood Home
· 2026
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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Bill "Bull Plaskett" Alderson at the Mill Creek Trail trailhead, starting the hike up the canyon where his great-grandfather E.R. Sans ran his sawmill and grandmother Mabel Sans Plaskett spent her childhood.
Mill Creek tumbles out of the Santa Lucia Range to the Big Sur coast, and
for the Plaskett family it is more than a pretty canyon. At the mouth of
this creek, Mabel Eva Sans — later Mabel Plaskett — spent her childhood.
Her father, E.R. Sans, the “Coyote Man,” operated the Mill Creek sawmill
that gave the creek its name, cutting redwood from the canyon in the years
when everything a coast family had was built from what the land provided.
Mabel never forgot it. Decades later she wrote about those years for
The Land, remembering the mill, the creek, and a childhood lived under
these same redwoods.
In 2026, her grandson Bill “Bull Plaskett” Alderson and his wife
Kim Alderson walked the Mill Creek Trail up the canyon toward the old
mill site. The mill itself is long gone — nothing of the works remains to
photograph — but the canyon Mabel knew is still here: the creek running
over gray boulders, moss on the oaks, and fire-scarred old-growth redwoods
that were already ancient when the sawmill was running. One fallen giant
now bridges the ravine, wide enough to sit on like a porch.
These photographs follow the trail as it climbs above the creek — the same
country a little girl once called home, still standing quiet under the
redwoods.
Photographs
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Moss-covered oaks and redwoods above the Mill Creek Trail.
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Bill "Bull Plaskett" Alderson on the narrow Mill Creek Trail as it contours above the redwood canyon.
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Bill "Bull Plaskett" Alderson walking the redwood flat beside Mill Creek, near where the Sans family lived at the mouth of the creek.
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A hiker-built teepee of driftwood limbs in a redwood grove along Mill Creek.
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Kim Alderson atop a fallen old-growth redwood spanning the Mill Creek ravine.
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Kim Alderson on the great fallen redwood log across Mill Creek.
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Kim Alderson resting above the boulders of Mill Creek on the hike to the old mill site.
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Looking up into the redwood canopy along Mill Creek.
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Redwood crowns over the Mill Creek canyon.
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Sunlight breaking through the redwood canopy above Mill Creek.
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Bill "Bull Plaskett" Alderson beneath fire-scarred old-growth redwoods above Mill Creek — giants that predate the sawmill era.
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Bill "Bull Plaskett" Alderson at the base of a massive fire-hollowed redwood beside Mill Creek.
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Bill "Bull Plaskett" Alderson standing in front of the fire-hollowed old-growth redwood on Mill Creek.
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Kim Alderson on the Mill Creek Trail.
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Sun flaring through an old-growth redwood on Mill Creek — survivors of the logging days.
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Old-growth redwood trunks rising out of the Mill Creek canyon.
