“Some probably drove a vehicle, the sailors that were permanently stationed there. We got to know a few of them: a cook, butcher, and chief petty officer of the commissary; they drove down. The main group of sailors only stayed a short time to practice the gunnery, shooting at the target behind a plane, which took off from the local airfield at Princeton. It would make continuous trips around, coming in from the Half Moon Bay side, out over the ocean. You could hear it and see it because the tracers left their trail through the air.”
(Photo: Elaine’s father owned a bar near the corner of Sunshine Valley Road & Ethleldore.)
Special thanks to John Vonderlin ([email protected]) for the following post.
From: Coast Dairies Property: A Land Use History, click here
“The Davenport cement plant (it became Pacific Cement and Aggregates in 1956, Lonestar Cement Corporation in 1965 and RMC Pacific Materials in 1988), brought immediate military attention to the North Coast following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Believing that Japan might attack the U.S. mainland, the military quickly posted guards and lookouts around Davenport and imposed stringent blackout requirements on its residents.
“Later in December, when the ship Agiworld was attacked by a Japanese submarine off Cypress Point south of Monterey, security along the coast was heightened. A Japanese submarine was also sighted off the coast a few miles north of Davenport, resulting in a brief skirmish between the submarine and a single plane from the Army Air Corps.
“Eventually a segment of the all-black 54th Coast Artillery was stationed at Davenport and regular night canine patrols were instituted at all the area beaches. In addition, four shore mounted guns were placed strategically around the Cement Plant. Two 75mm guns were mounted overlooking the pier and two 155mm Howitzers were mounted just to the east of Newtown. Many of the young people living in the area at the time became airplane spotters, spending long hours in the lookout stations posted along the coastal hills.”
My Dad, Robert (Bob) Ballard was born in Pescadero along with 11 other brothers and sisters….he took me to the tunnels on several occasions and told me that they were used to store guns and ammunition during the war. He helped ‘build’ them. I do not recall where the others were although I do remember that they were mostly on the water’s edge, but there were tunnels and observations points high above Gazos Creek…there was a military facility there too. That, my husband and I discovered in the early ’60’s that there is (or was ) a missile base in the Santa Cruz Mountains…we found it by accident while on a Sunday drive with our first child…Dad had a lot of memorabilia that he received from the military personnel stationed in the Pescadero area…When the troops left the area (I was very young at the time..(born 6/6/42)…they left a Springer Spaniel dog behind…he became my pet…Billy.
————–
Peering into a South Coast tunnel, photo by John Vonderlin
When I first landed on the Coastside, and became intrigued with local history, I met with Louie Miguel, whose father, Joseph, was one of the masterminds behind the spectacular Palace Miramar Hotel. Louie offered good background info and also talked about the US military taking over his father’s buildings during WWII.
[The military moved into many of the Coastside’s public buildings, and most certainly, those located on the beach side of the highway, as the Palace was.]
Below: To visit the “California State Military�? website, click here
The former Camp Miramar was established on 21 April 1943 when the U.S. Army entered into leases with several land owners in order to provide for a camp to house infantry units assigned to the Western Defense Command. The 1 June 1943 edition of the Station List of the Army of the United States, issued by the Adjutant General of the U.S. Army, stated that a single rifle company, Company G of the 125th Infantry Regiment, was present at Camp Miramar.
At the time of acquisition, there were two major buildings that the U.S. Army took control of. The first was the Miramar School, a small elementary school that served the local faming community and located on the eastern parcel, between State Highway 1 and Valencia Street. The other major building was the Palace Miramar Hotel and Resort, a large redwood-shingled building located on the beach in the western parcel of the Site.
To these substantial buildings, the U.S. Army added several temporary barracks, mess halls and support buildings. These were of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) design developed by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in the late 1930’s. These prefabricated, wood framed buildings could be assembled in as little as three hours by joining components with lag screws. Creosote soaked posts served as the foundation for these buildings. With the CCC buildings included, the post had a capacity to house 495 soldiers.
Palace Miramar Hotel and Beach Resort in the 1920’s (www.halfmoonbaymemories.com).
In a letter to the Adjutant General, U.S. Army; dated 23 January 1944, the Western Defense Command identified the Site as vacant and excess to its needs. On 11 May 1944, Office of the Chief of Engineers at the War Department approved a request from the Bureau of Yards and Docks of the Navy Department for the six of the barracks and one on the latrine buildings. This transfer of the buildings to the Point Montera Anti-Aircraft Training Center was made without the U.S. Navy becoming responsible for restoration the land on which the buildings were situated.
From September until December 1944, the U.S. Army terminated its leases for the Site. A 1946 aerial photograph does not show any of the CCC buildings remaining. On 6 May 1952, the U.S. Army terminated its permits for water and sewer lines that ran along State Highway 1.
(Photo at right: Shirley Thackara in the PQ14 at the Moss Beach military airstrip)
Former Air Force Service Pilot Shirley Thackara returned to the Coastside in 1993 to reclaim WWII memories of flying PQ14s, tiny planes, so tiny only one person could fit inside.
She flew the PQ14 out of a military airstrip in Moss Beach. Her scarey assignment three years after Pearl Harbor, she told me, “was supposed to be very hush-hush�?. What she did was tow targets behind the plane and military gunners on the ground practiced shooting at them— pretty dangerous if they missed as stray bullets could do damage to both civilians and Shirley herself– which was why the training occurred on the remote Coastside.
But when Shirley came back to Moss Beach almost 50 years later she said she couldn’t find anything she recognized.
The memories hid from her because the Coastside had grown up ,and the reminders swept away since the summer of 1944—when Shirley, a 5’11�? former Pan American Airways secretary– decided to turn in her manual typewriter and learn how to fly during WWII.
She trained at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts and after 200 hours of flight time she made the grade, became a member of the coveted Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASPS) and was assigned to Moss Beach where she bunked at the edge of the flight strip with fellow WASPS Mary Lee Leatherbee and Mildred Toner. Women flying military planes was groundbreaking.
Moss Beach was in the countryside but even more remote than Shirley Thackara expected. When she saw her new home, an abandoned farmhouse with curtainless windows, her response was “….it was so awful, it was funny. Everything in dark wood, showing signs of once having been a bird house, three rooms, kitchen with nothing but a sink—and absolutely no furniture except three Army cots.�?
Parked outside what she dubbed “the fishing shack�? was Shirley’s 1941 Mercury convertible. She recalled driving along the cliffs to Half Moon Bay, but she couldn’t find the road in 1993. The “fishing shack�? was gone, the military strip wasn’t where she remembered it and even the road she had traveled had disappeared.
They flew the PQ14s at Moss Beach during WWII: L-R: WASPS Mildred Toner, Mary Lee Leatherbee, Shirley Thackara–with Army Air Force Lt. Nash.
(all photos Shirley Thackara–and thanks to the Spanishtown Historical Society for the introduction to Shirley)
a child at the time. Elaine lived with her family in Moss Beach near Sunshine Valley Road (the lovely “connector” road between Montara and Moss Beach.) Dad owned a bar frequented by the sailors at the nearby naval station. Mom took care of her children and helped her husband.
“I guess the military men came down from SF, on their way to Fort Ord in Monterey. Sometimes only a few drove by, but often, there was a very long convoy, and they had the right of way,” explained Elaine.
“You did not get in between the vehicles. So, if we were coming on to the main road, Highway 1, from a side street, such as we did from our garage on Sunshine Valley Road, we had to wait for the convoy to finish, and it could be a long wait, maybe as long as 15-20 minutes. If you saw them coming, the best thing to do was to get out on the road, ahead of them.”
“There were mainly trucks,” remembered Elaine, “covered with canvas tops, with soldiers in the back, and an occasional jeep, in between. Some vehicles were around because they were stationed at local military installations, such as the airfield and Coast Guard in Princeton.
“On the coast road, at Devil Slide, there was a small army post up on a mountain top. You could see it from the highway. It was rather small; I believe it was there to track airplanes. There was a long narrow stairway leading from the road to the building. I have no idea how the men walked up and down that steep stairway without falling into the ocean, especially if they had been out celebrating!
It was there for several years after the war, and you can still the foundation of the structure. My then future sister-in-law, Hazel Dooley, married one of the fellows who was stationed there, O. B. Dooley.”
Top Photo: (At far right Elaine Martini Teixeria with sister Loretta.)
Memorial Day is a time when Americans typically reflect on their history, and WWII has a special meaning for the Coastside.
A few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the military arrived in Half Moon Bay. Soldiers occupied public schools and privately owned hotels. There was genuine fear of another surprise attack right here on the Coastside.
Overnight Half Moon Bay was transformed into a wartime setting, where secrecy prevailed, perhaps more so than anywhere else in the nation. You couldn’t read about Coastside military activities in the Half Moon Bay Review; a search through old issues reveals nothing at all.
Yet during the day locals volunteered as “spotters” watching the sea for enemy submarines and hostile aircraft in the skies. At night all Coastside windows were darkened with black-out paper.
There were barracks at Princeton-by-the-Sea, near the airport; the military occupied the Palace Miramar Hotel, Half Moon Bay, and several places on the South Coast, where, it is said, deep tunnels were constructed to store weapons.
In this photo, you can see the water and sanitary district building still standing today, overlooking the Pacific. Their website confirms the building was constructed by the navy in 1944.
If you look for remnants of the naval station today, you won’t find any. Highway 1, which was built in sections along the Coastside, mainly in the 1950s, has changed the surrounding terrain completely.
The land on which the naval station stood looks pretty level in the photo. Today a hedge-like dirt berm erases all memories of the naval station’s presence.
Frank Torres, the Peruvian world traveler, who built the original Moss Beach Distillery in the late 1920s, lived near the restaurant in a house painted pink. Long after he sold the Distillery, he resided in the house, and one day shortly before his death, I paid the famous restaurateur a visit. I wanted to interview him for a historical piece. I brought a tape recorder but I must have pushed the wrong button because the result was hard to make out.
But what really struck me was a painting on the wall. I call it the “lost” painting because I don’t know what happened to the piece of art. It was a painting of Frank Torres, wearing a suit and tie, with Devil’s Slide or the cliffs of Moss Beach behind him. I remembered that, in the picture, Frank looked large, as if the artist wanted to convey his importance, his power on the Coastside.
In recent months, I’ve been in contact with Millie Muller, a tenacious researcher from the East Coast. Millie is related to Fannie Torres, and she has been looking high and low, and in every dusty corner, for information on the Moss Beach restaurant and the Torres family history. She’s a remarkable woman; she’s come up with a lot of new stuff–including this 1950s photo of Fannie and Frank, with the painting I saw in the Torres home. The painting is on the wall behind Fannie and Frank.
Here’s the photo (be sure to look closely at the background, at the painting on the wall.) Oh, I almost forgot: the Frank and Fannie Torres didn’t look like this all the time. In this photo they are dressed up to publicize Halloween events at their restaurant!
Do you know where the painting is? Do you have any interesting leads on the Torres family history for Millie?
In the 1970s a fun place to go to for Sunday brunch was the Galway Bay Inn in Moss Beach. The owner himself, Michael Murphy, was often there, serving the customers.
Do you remember the restaurant?
I wish I’d kept the napkins with the four leaf clover logo. The Galway Bay Inn overlooked the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve; we’d get a seat by the windows; it was a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning. Do you know where it was?
In the early 1970s the low key Galway Bay Inn became the upbeat Moss Beach Distillery when several young, high energy guys bought the historic prohibition roadhouse, among them Dave Andrews and Sam Varela.
(Photo: I believe both Dave Andrews & Sam Varela are standing outside the Distillery; sorry the image is so small.)
Dave and Sam were personable and easy going; they soon had a big loyal following. Such a special, loyal following that every year there is a reunion in Princeton-by-the-Sea.
Back in the very late 60’s a drunken Irishman by the name of Michael Murphy, who worked for the Telephone Company, spent so much time drinking in Dominics in HMB, that one day he woke up there, and decided that since it cost him so much to hang out there, he might as well buy the place.
So he did, but not having much money, and being a real tight—– Irishman, he converted it to an Irish restaurant by simply adding an O to the name thus creating O’Dominics. Do you remember ?
After a few years in the business, he sold the O’, and worked out a deal for Vic Torres’ place with Pearl [Torres], a restaurant which was located over a cove that reminded Murphy of Galway Bay ( beats me ). Thus was born the Galway Bay Inn an Irish restaurant.
In early 1973, I was diving for Abs near Flat Rock, right below “Weebies” (Sp ?) place, which I think is where “Goofus, the duck” lived. This is a Sunday about noon; I didn’t live on the Coastside then, so not too familiar with where I was. I was thirsty from diving, and wanted a beer, looked at the building , couldn’t figure what it was, so checked it out, and by golly there was a Bar in there, but not one customer in the whole place.
To make a long story short, 9 months later I was behind the Bar and “Goofus” was in my ice bin behind the Bar with two of my friends, Jerry and Mark, cracking up.
October of 1973 the Moss Beach Distillery was born, as was the world famous “Tamale Jerry enterprise.” As well as a classic Streaker with a very cold butt ! God those were fun times ! The “Still” today is geared for Tourists, not locals and lacks the Color of the early days. There are too many memories to list but I know you can recount many, I did spend time with Fannie and Frank Torres at their home close to the Still and enjoyed their stories. (Photo below: Fanny & Frank Torres; behind them the “lost” painting of Frank Torres wearing suit & tie, with Devil’s Slide in the background, courtesy Millie Muller.)
Does anybody know who “Goofus the duck” was? And what about the Tamale Jerry enterprise? I know Sam is referring to photographer Jerry Koontz,
(Photo: Jerry Koontz & Doug St. Denis in the 1970s.)
and I do remember Jerry selling homemade tamales from a cart.
——————-
Sam? Are you there? Peter Adams remembers the good times. He and his wife send you a big hug.
(Photo: Elaine Martini Teixeira at far right, with sister Loretta.)
(Photo: Elaine’s father owned a bar near the corner of Sunshine Valley Road & Ethleldore.)
