Dawn and the Dons/THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL
CHAPTER XXI
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL
AMID these curious contrasts the “Old Pacific Capital” retains its quaint and peculiar charm and lives on in satisfied content. Rich in historic memory, unmoved by the feverish activities of a commercial age, Monterey has been slow to depart from the pleasant paths along which she has found such happiness and delight. Down through the centuries she has marched with dignity and grace, ever cultivating and practicing those ceremonial courtesies that have left an indelible impress upon her daily life.
The visitor to this old historic town will find no towering skyscrapers nor throbbing centers of commerce, but he will find a business center with clean and well paved streets and modern and well conducted shops. He will find no palatial dwellings whose architectural splendors typify the luxurious display of inordinate wealth, but he will find the pleasing and fascinating picture of charming homes in a picturesque setting under the spell of an historic background. He will breathe the lingering air of old Spain as he observes about him surviving evidence of the old Spanish days. And he will also find here interesting reminders of the beginning of American occupation and the birth of a great American state.
The old Custom House and Colton Hall will, of course, claim first attention, but as the visitor wanders through the town and its quiet purlieus he will find many other objects of interest to engage his attention. Near Colton Hall still stands the old Larkin house, built by Thomas O. Larkin, an American, in 1834. Larkin was one of the few Americans who came thus early to Monterey, and he there became a notable figure. He established the first wholesale store in the town, cultivated friendly relations with the Californians, entertained with a generous hospitality, became the first, and only, American consul, and smoothed over many difficulties that arose out of local hostilities engendered by Fremont’s unwelcome visit and the Bear Flag incident. Many cascarone balls were given in the old Larkin home. The character and the cost of one of these social functions is shown by Larkin’s carefully and systematically kept accounts: “Two dozen bottles wine, $19. One and a half dozen bottles of beer, $13.50. Thirty pies, $13. Cake, $12. Box of raisins, $4. Cheese, $1.50. Nine bottles of aguardiente (whiskey), $13.50. Music, $25. Nine pounds of sperm candles, $9. Five pounds of sugar, $3. Other eatables, $5. Servants, $4.” Like all Gaul, these expenses may be divided into three parts: wine, beer and whiskey, $46; pies, cake, raisins, cheese, sugar and other eatables, $38.50, and music, lighting and servants, $38; a total of 122.50 for an evening’s entertainment.
Near the Larkin house is the old adobe, also built by, Larkin, where General Sherman, then Lieutenant Sher- man, had his headquarters in 1847. Over on Alvarado Street, Monterey’s principal thoroughfare, was the Sherman Rose cottage, since removed to another part of town to make way for a bank building. Around this cottage has been woven a legend that has persisted through the years. As the story runs, the brilliant young American Lieutenant fell in love with the fascinating dark eyed Senorita Maria Ygnacio Bonifacio, daughter of a proud Spanish family, who reciprocated the affections of the blue eyed American. Calling to make his final adieus before taking his departure for the east, where he had been ordered, he presented a rose to the Sefiorita which they together planted under her window, with mutual vows of fidelity and a promise upon the part of the young Lieutenant that when the rose bloomed he would return to claim her for his bride. The rose grew and bloomed and became a trailing and blossoming vine that overran the low adobe that is still called the Sherman Rose cottage. But Sherman never returned. Instead he marched from Atlanta to the sea and into the Hall of Fame, while the Senorita who helped him plant the rose remained unmarried, and concealed her disappointment beneath a sweetness and beauty of character that shed a soft radiance about her until she went to her final rest more than half a century later.
The House of the Four Winds, so called because of a roof that sloped four ways with a weather vane at its peak, was also built by Larkin. It was the first Hall of Records in the new state and the first Recorder of Monterey County had his office there. It is today a meeting place for civic organizations, and the weekly luncheons of Monterey’s Chamber of Commerce are there held. On Decatur Street, not far from the old Custom House,
is the first house built of brick in California. It was built in 1848 by a young Virginian named Dickinson who started to California with the ill-fated Donner party in 1846, but who escaped the Donner Lake tragedy by joining those who left the Donner party at Fort Bridger and took a different route to California. Near-by, also on Decatur Street, is the old whaling station, built in 1855,
and notable in its day when Monterey was an important and profitable whaling center. A curious reminder of the whaling days is the Whale Bone House, a private residence, where each joint of mamal vertebrae is treasured. Whales are still frequently seen in the waters of the bay and are occasionally taken for profit. At Scott and Pacific Streets is California’s first theatre,
now a tea house and curio shop. At main and Franklin streets is the site of California’s first convent, founded in 1851 by three nuns of the Dominican Order under the direction of Right Rev. Joseph Alemany, Bishop of Monterey. It was here that Conception Arguello donned the robes of Dominican sisterhood and became the convent’s, and therefore California’s, first novitiate.
Monterey was prolific in “first things.” It was the first white settlement on the Pacific coast of North America within what is now United States territory. It was California’s birthplace and her first capital. Here, in 1846, was published California’s first newspaper. Commodore Sloat took possession of Monterey on July 7, 1846, and placed Robert Colton in charge as Alcalde. On the 15th of the following month he and Dr. Robert Baylor Semple issued the first number of “The Californian.” They were unusual men and were both prominent in California history, Colton as a wise, able and efficient dictator of
Monterey during its transition period from Mexican to American rule, and Semple as a leading figure in the Bear Flag incident and as President of California’s first constitutional convention. Their printing press was an old ramshackle affair that had been used by the padres on occasion in their church work. In his dairy, written at the time, Colton says:
“Though small in dimensions,
our first number is as full of news as a black walnut is of meat. We have received by couriers, during the week, intelligence from all the important military posts through the territory. Very little of this has transpired; it reaches the public for the first time through our sheet. We have also the declaration of war between the United States and Mexico, with an abstract of the debate in the
Senate. A crowd was waiting when the first sheet was thrown from the press. It produced quite a little sensation. Never was a bank run upon harder; not, however,
by people with paper to get specie, but exactly the reverse. One-half of the paper is in English, the other in Spanish.” They issued their little paper every Saturday, filled with news that came by local courier or by sailing vessels that had rounded Cape Horn. Today, the Monterey Daily Herald, through the Associated Press and other news gathering agencies, lays before its readers the news of the world that comes over the whispering wires or through the wireless ether from the remotest parts of earth.
California’s first hotel was at Monterey. It was called the “Washington” and it sheltered the delegates to the constitutional convention in 1849.
“It was here,” as Mrs. Anna Geil Andresen tells us, “that our first organic law in its making was discussed over rich and rare vintages, to be finally put in shape at Colton Hall.”
And so the list of “first things” and of historically interesting things might be run out at considerable length. There was California’s first frame house, erected in 1847 by William Bushton, an Australian, the house itself being brought in sections by way of Cape Horn. There, on Houston Street, is still preserved the first California home of Robert Louis Stevenson, where he lived with his friend Simoneau and next door to which lived “the little doctor and his little wife,” so frequently and so lovingly referred to by the author of “Treasure Island.” It was California’s first military post. It was the first county seat of a county created by California’s first legislature by the Act of February 18, 1850—seven months before California was admitted to the Union. There is the granite cross, where stood the Vizcaino Oak; there the Serra monument that marks the landing place of the great padre on that memorable day in 1770. The Sloat monument commemorates the first American military occupation of California. And so lengthens out the list of Monterey’s historic landmarks. But probably the most interesting of all are the old Spanish homes with their red tiled roofs, weathered and moss grown, their flower tangled patios hidden behind high walls, on streets that follow at times the irregular course of century old bridle paths. Here may still be seen the Munras home, the first pretentious dwelling in Monterey, built by Don Esteban Munras of Barcelona, Spain, and now presided over by a granddaughter of Don Esteban; the Obrego home, where the most prominent and distinguished visitors to Monterey were entertained; the Pacheco home, built by
Don Francisco Perez Pacheco, a wealthy land owner; the Amesti home, built by Don Jose Amesti, Spanish born, whose wife was a sister of General Vallejo; the Soberanes home, built by General Vallejo’s father, later coming into the owner- a As ship of the Soberanes, Spanish family. These a distinguished are typical of those old Spanish homes whose hospitable standards are still reflected in the social atmosphere of this delightful old town.
Just outside Monterey’s eastern gate is the world renowned Del Monte and the equally famous Del Monte grounds, where the world’s pleasure seekers gather throughout the year, and where one may wander amid the beauties of garden and grove. Here, in a natural park of unusual beauty, for whose adornment a world-wide arboreal and horticultural tribute was levied, the genius of man and a bountiful nature have conspired to produce a veritable fairyland.
Out in the harbor into which Vizcaino sailed in 1602, and where, from the deck of his flagship, Com- modore Sloat saw the Stars and Stripes flung to the breeze over the old Custom House in 1846, lies each day the fishing fleet of small boats, “slumbering in the sun.” With evening these boats, manned by jolly, rubber booted and flannel shirted fishermen, will put silently out to sea in the light of a friendly moon, to return rich laden in the coming dawn.
Oceanward lies that wonderful peninsula playground that stretches from Pebble Beach to the heights of Del Monte Forest. Through this forest wound those olden trails over which the padres led the ceremonial processions—past rustic stations of the cross—from the provincial capital of Monterey to the Mother Mission of Carmel. Few are the changes that have been wrought in these wooded heights, save for winding roads and bridle paths that lead through their shadowy depths. Deer and elk find there a safe haven, while an occasional fox or coyote is surprised by the passing horseman or the sightseeing motorist.
From vantage points on the higher levels, where the road or trail emerges from the forest to skirt some elbow or promontory, views of surpassing beauty are obtained. Yonder is the crescent shore of that incomparable bay whose miles of sweeping curve stretch out to Santa Cruz in the hazy distance. Here are the white beaches that Carmel so jealously guards, neighboring the famous Pebble Beach whose fascination lures the childish fancy and invites the serious study of the inquiring mind. There jutting headlands and rocky cliffs are half hidden by ancient cypress groves and enriched by the emerald beauty of the Monterey pine. Eastward the Gabilan Mountains tower above the valley of the Salinas, while westward the Pacific stretches in liquid miles to far Cathay. Below us, from ocean shore to forest heights, we have a panoramic view of this peninsula playground. The scene, at first bewildering, gradually becomes clearer,