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Day dreaming through Moss Beach

This morning, early, I drove to Moss Beach, to the west side near the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. I wanted to see if Charlie Nye’s “Reefs II” was still there, at Nevada & Beach Streets; I heard that the historic building was gone.

Even though you’d think it would be easy to keep in touch with the communities of Montara, Moss Beach, Princeton, El Granada and Miramar, it isn’t–you can go decades without seeing someone who used to be your best friend or your former next door neighbor.

You can also go for years without knowing if your favorite old building is still standing.

I think Coastsiders get lost in their neighborhoods. I do, in mine, in El Granada, living on an avenue created by the designer of the Ocean Shore Railroad’s “showplace.” I can stay here for days without seeing anybody and feeling very happy about it!

People who do not live on the Coastside have no idea how good life is here.

Just recently a lady who works for Bank of the West in Burlingame told me how amazed she was to find that there were such beautiful, intimate communities off Hwy 1.

Here’s the point of this post: I drove up to Moss Beach to see if Nye’s Reefs was still there and I ended up at Nevada & I forget what the cross-street was. I didn’t see Nyes where it used to be.

This is embarrassing: Maybe I didn’t end up on the right street–now I’m not sure. Guess I’ll have to go back up there and check it out again. But the Moss Beach I saw this morning was very different from the one I remember just a few years ago when there were still many 1920s-style bungalows around.

Today I saw much larger, affluent landscaped homes reminding me of how long it had been since I visited the west side of Moss Beach.

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Granada (10)

(Photo: Ocean Shore Railroad, courtesy Spanishtown Historical Soceity)

While the cement curbs and sidewalks remained [many of them leading nowhere], no one built homes near them. The most ambitious project–the Coney Island West–did not materialize and Granada now had the curious feeling of a ghost town.
The Ocean Shore Railroad declared bankruptcy and the rails were torn up about 1922–but four years later prominent leaders in Half Moon Bay looked for mass transit alternatives, among them a 4,000 foot long tunnel cut through the Santa Cruz Mountains.

About the same time Lewis W. Martin purchased 640 acres for $150,000 in what was now known as El Granada. Martin announced that he had elaborate plans for a development called the El Granada Country Club, accessed via Isabella and Columbus Avenues–close to San Francisco, he said, where he planned to direct an agressive membership campaign.

The landowner sliced the tract into 7500 cabin sites and talked of planting colorful flowers everywhere.

But Lewis Martin’s plans collapsed when the Great Depression put a choke-hold on many investments and there was no great rush to buy property which was declining in value. Also, the strangely constructed Pedro Mountain Road–a road supposedly built for automobiles–with its remarkable collection of twists and turns and its uneven, unexpected drops in the pavement, did not win the hearts and minds of drivers.

On the other hand, as I have written many times, with the loss of the railroad, the Coastside’s isolation remained, turning Granada and its neighboring communities into a perfect haven for rumrunners, bootleggers and roadhouses during Prohibition.

….end….

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Guest Chef di Gabriele Carlesso At Mezza Luna This Week Only

Burt and I went to lunch at Mezza Luna [located in the old Princeton Hotel] in Princeton-by-the-Sea today and were delighted to learn that Guest Chef Gabriele was preparing the “specials”, including a spectacular Veal Scallapino. Gabriele owns the Trattoria Tre Fonti near Venice [Italy] and while enjoying a week’s vacation on the Coastside he decided he wanted to cook.

Photo: Chef Gabriele

Photo: We ordered the Veal Scallapino.

To visit Mezza Luna, click here

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Granada (9)

(Remember, I wrote this piece in 1977, and, yes, I admit to doing a “little” editing. I had arrived on the Coastside a few years earlier and it was love at first sight. I’m still in love.)

Even though the writing was on the wall, the cat was on the roof–the automobile was more reliable and faster than the old-fashioned Ocean Shore Railroad–employees of the Ocean Shore Land Co. continued trimming trees and planting fresh flowers in their showplace called Granada.

But soon the beds of flowers would wilt because the predictions were wrong. The San Francisco 1906 Earthquake & Fire did send people in search of safety but they gravitated to the Peninsula–and not Granada.

Even worse, from the Ocean Shore’s point of view, San Francisco quickly rebuilt itself–leading to rumors that the Coastside had been prematurely cut up.

Very few vacation homes or permanent residences were actually built in Granada leaving acres of open land that had been subdivided into small, narrow lots. Some lot owners defaulted on payments and the lots reverted to the Ocean Shore’s real estate subsidiary. [By then the land company had overextended itself and was forced to also default].

…to be continued…