Aloha, I am presently living on Maui, HI. In a few years time, I am planning to move back home to where my heart is – San Francisco Bay Area. The coast specifically. I am a fourth generation San Franciscan, and as much as I have enjoyed my time here on Maui, I miss home. I read as much history of California as I can find and have time to read. I just happened on your page and I love it and will continue to stayed tune. Aloha for now. Beth (Anderson) Wyatt **I graduated from Capuchino HS in 1972.
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Photo: Trying to get you in the mood: This isn’t Maui–it’s Kauai, close enough!
As I’ve been re-reading my Granada article, I have more thoughts and more questions.
How could the Ocean Shore promise lot buyers that two schools would be built in Granada? It is true that if there was a county building department they did not keep track of construction on the Coastside. You can’t find building dates for a lot of pre-1906 earthquake buildings–and post-earthquake as well.
Perhaps, like the educational publisher, Harr Wagner, who attempted to develop an artists-only colony at Montara, the Ocean Shore Railroad had the same idea in mind for Granada–more than their showplace….There is no place on the Coastside like Granada, with its Daniel H. Burnham street plan, a plan, that incidentally, confuses many people driving through, looking for a friend’s home.
having a Sea Glass Festival at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk this weekend, John Vonderlin tells me.
Hi June,
…I saw it online. I became acquainted with the details of the collection of this most mainstream of the branches of non-buoyant marine debris collecting, when I and my friend attended a book signing of “Pure Sea Glass,” the sea glass Bible, by Richard Lamotte in Half Moon Bay.
I don’t collect it myself, unless it has artistic potential for me, but by reserving it for my beachcombing partner, who’s collection these photos are of, I assure I get all of the treasures shown in the last photo, part of one of the many collections I have from Neptune’s Vomitorium at Invisible Beach. Though I must admit the natural glass valentine shown in the last photo is collectible even in my odd world. Enjoy. John
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Mary Beth writes:
Good morning June,
I caught your blog this morning while doing my dialy “sea glass” Google searching. I and was interested to see that you’ve mentioned the Sea Glass Festival. Just a friendly FYI, it is being put on by the North American Sea Glass Association. And I love the idea of having a Norther Cal. chapter.
Richard will be there and he’d probably sign your book for you. Someday soon perhaps we’ll get those chapters formed 🙂
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[Note: I wrote this in 1977. I did a lot of research at the San Mateo County History Museum….then I began to study old newspapers and talked to some oldtimers, now gone. It was great fun and very satisfying work.]
Every weekend crowds arrived to celebrate the most recent progress along the Ocean Shore line. Locals often joined the out-of-town speculators who hoped to turn a fast profit when the resort skyrocketed. To provide additional incentives for wavering buyers, developers offered what they guaranteed as a perfect sewer system and water supply.
Before the first summer houses appeared on the scene, building contractors poured cement sidewalks and curbs at no extra cost to the purchaser. Promoters also pointed out to potential lot buyers that they reserved land for two public schools.
Why buy lots in Granada? some asked. Remember the year was about 1908 and after the devastating San Francisco Earthquake and Fire two years earlier, people were truly frightened–and many wanted to move to a “safe” place where the earth wouldn’t shake.
Some “experts” predicted that thousands would actually flee the City–and hopes for the Ocean Shore Railroad soared. The railroad’s real estate subsidiary, the Shoreline Investment Co. chose Granada as their showplace–where they expected a large number of investors to purchase lots on the San Mateo County Coastside.
Daniel H. Burnham, one of the country’s finest landscape architects [he had designed a new street plan, with wide boulevards, for post-earthquake San Francisco but it was never implemented] was hired to design a beautiful plan for Granada. Not just any old plan, but something different and unique.
Instead of straight lines, he sketched a series of semi-circles joining up with Plaza Alhambra. Some avenues in Granda were 150 to 200 feet wide and architect Burnham suggested planting colorful flowers to spurce up the streets. Thousands of trees were planted on the surrounding hillsides–and when completed, everybody agreed that Granada was a masterpiece.
[Note: Irene Bettencourt told me that the Eucalyptus trees on the hillsides were planted by a San Francisco family–I have to find the name.]
John Vonderlin writes:
Hi June,
I started my emails by asking about Gordon’s Chute. Here are a few related photos. The first is from the top of the hill that I have to carry the tires up. 99% of the time a shot of Tunitas will be from here.
Gordon’s Chute was anchored on the first rock projection below the cliffs to the left. You can barely see HMB(Princeton?) in the distance.The second shot is looking up from that projection at the cliffs above. The third is looking seaward from the rock. The fourth captures a little bit of the hazard the ships must have faced while loading so close to the rocky shore. The last is of an unusual feature in the nearby tidepools that is generated when waves repeatedly hit concretions exposed by erosion. I’ve only seen these in a few places.
I suspect the acceleration of the water causes this feature in the same way that an airplane wing derives lift from its shape by accelerating the air and subsequently lowering the pressure along its upper surface. Enjoy. John
One other thing. Just as Tunitas was the End of The Line for the Oceanshore R.R., Gordon’s Chute is the end of the line for beach explorers. I believe between there and Martin’s Beach is impassable despite a mention in an old book about the possibility during low tide.
I’ve been there at extremely low tide and it looks scary even to me. We are planning an attempt with wetsuits, boogie boards, cell phones, and a small, light ladder some time later this year when the lowest tides are happening. If you go to California Coastal Records Project Picture # 200506431(Gordon’s Chute’s location) or “Tunitas Tidepools” and keep hitting the Northwest 1 Button, you’ll fly along the most heavily sea caved (20+) area I know of around here. It looks pretty gnarly, but that’s why I want to see and photograph it.
John Vonderlin [click here for more of John’s writing about the South Coast] collector of the Coastside’s natural wonders, asks: Was Pescadero home to the “mythic Atlanteans?”
Read more of his email:
“Being a skeptic, I was subsequently more excited to find out there were star-shaped bits for rock borers. But, how a rotating bit could make anything other then a circular hole was beyond me.
“In fact, I have a beautiful piece of granite, of a type that I call “Explosivite,” because of the smooth three inch hole bored in it for placement of explosives in making the pass down from Yosemite to Highway 395.
“Strangely it was an Atlantean researcher who wrote a paper about his expedition to analyze these ocean floor oddities that solved the mystery as far as I was concerned.
“He was able to trace the shipment of huge blocks on barges from the island quarry they were mined from to an early reef building project. Several barges had overturned losing their cargo. The mysterious holes are merely the product of the concussive impact drill getting its drill bit stuck. Instead of turning and forming a round hole it merely pounds its way through the rock, leaving a star-shaped hole.
” I’ll include a few pictures to illustrate this phenomena and a few other NotRocks. The last picture is of a 5K to 7K Jomon artifact a friend from Japan sent me. This ocean rounded stone was found 50 kilometers from the ocean in the same yam field from which he has gathered thousands of artifacts.
“The Jomon, an extremely sophisticated early culture are the genetic ancestors of the Ainu, the aboriginial settlers of Japan. While there are only a few thousand Ainu (badly treated by the homogenous, conquering culture)left in Northern Japan, there is good evidence that they were the genetic stock that first settled the New World. They share more with the earliest skeletons found in America (Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Man, etc.) then the later Native Americans.
“Note the amulet? talisman? has a groove worn where it must have swung from a thong. My point being my love for NotRocks is well founded historically. Enjoy John”
[Images below, courtesy John Vonderlin]
June: What is “Atlantean super science?”
John Vonderlin: Atlantean Super Science, is the fanciful belief that the supposed civilization of Atlantis had scientific and technological powers far beyond our present civilization. This general belief of lost technological or paranormal powers once possessed and used by ancient civilizations is very common. The insistence by some, that the Egyptians couldn’t have built the Pyramids or raised hundred ton obelisks without anti-gravity machines is another example. The Ica Stones with their etchings of beings hunting dinosaurs from the backs of pterodactyls with laser rifles is another interesting if totally fraudulent example.
Even the Bible gets involved  In Ezekial 1, (4 to 28) there seems to be a description by Ezekial of him watching a spaceship landing and meeting Space Aliens displaying what people of that time would have considered Super Science. Or at least that was what a former N.A.S.A. scientist in a pulp paperback I once read maintained. Some of Scientology’s core beliefs include this kind of concept as have endless issues of D.C. and Marvel Comics.
