Beef cattle fatten on green hills and pasture lands in southern Monterey County, famed stock-raising area since mission times.
Offshore is a group of rocks haunted by both California and Steller sea lions, an island much used by seafowl and naturally named “Bird Island,” and a roiling, turbulent channel appropriately called “The Devil’s Cauldron” which is a favorite spot of the sea otter. These strange creatures were long thought to have been hunted to extinction but about 30 of them appeared in 1938 off Bixby Creek, 12 miles south of Point Lobos, and there are now believed to be almost 100 in the group. Some ardent pursuers of wild life are already asserting that the otter have now increased to such an extent that the “crop” should be “harvested”—a policy which could easily result in extinguishing the species.
A mile below Point Lobos is Carmel Highlands, an area of rich estates and fine homes, some of them set on the very edge of the continent. The James house, in this area, has been called the most beautiful residence in the United States. And the gardens hereabout are a thing to marvel at.
Beyond “the Highlands” runs a real road of romance, a motor highway carved from the seaward face of the Santa Lucia mountains. Most of the distance to its junction with other routes at San Luis Obispo there is nothing between this road and the blue, blue sea but the cliffs. Above it, on the east, tower the mountains. It is no road for the man in a hurry, but for one who loves Nature it is glorious.
South from Carmel, in the trees or on the cliffs—sometimes almost built out over the ocean—are some of the most beautiful homes in America.
This is wildflower country. Within a 20-mile stretch you may see, in season, wild roses, primroses, California poppies, yellow lupine, wild mustard spreading over fields like a froth of foamy yellow, great bushes of blue lupine marching up rocky hillsides, almost cliffs: Queen Anne’s lace, succulents of many colors, and sometimes succulents which are not in bloom but whose foliage has turned a rich, dark red; Indian paint brush—all these abundant, in masses easy to see and recognize as you roll along. A naturalist could find many more.
The Spaniards would have come by this route if they could, but the mountains were too rugged, there was no path between sea and cliffs, and so they were forced inland. That this road was ever constructed was largely due to the efforts of Dr. John Roberts of Monterey, who used to ride horseback on calls to remote and isolated ranches up the canyons. It was almost 20 years in building.
South along this road from Point Lobos, beyond Garrapata Creek and Rocky Creek and Bixby Creek, past the light house at Point Sur and inland a few miles, is Pfeiffer-Big Sur State Park, a redwood park which is the entrance to 250,000 acres of wilderness area in the adjacent Los Padres National Forest. These redwoods are almost the most southerly of all: the actual southernmost ones are on Mill Creek, some 25 miles farther along the road.
And so to Watsonville. Watsonville exists because in 1852 one John H. Watson decided that the location was suitable for a town and, with another man, forthwith laid out one. Watsonville is strictly business. Even before Watson’s time, the Amestis, Castros, Vallejos and other Spanish pioneer families were busily raising grain and potatoes here. California’s great lettuce industry got its start in the Watsonville region and today it is a busy center for the raising and processing of lettuce, berries, beans, brussels sprouts, and many, many apples.