The First Inhabitants

Several thousand years before the first European explorers arrived in 1602, the coastal area of central California was inhabited by triblets of indigenous people known collectively as the Ohlone. Each triblet, averaging about 200 people, had one or more permanent villages usually consisting of dome-shaped thatched huts clustered around an open area. Here at Point Lobos, the Ohlone established spring and summer village sites near the mouth of San Jose Creek at the Reserve's northern boundary and along Gibson Creek, which forms the southern edge of the Reserve. Their village along San Jose Creek, known as Ichxenta, was first occupied about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, and is thought to be the longest inhabited Ohlone village site in the Monterey area.

The Ohlone enjoyed a plentiful food supply of acorns, birds and mammals from the nearby mountains, as well as fish from the ocean and local streams. Within the Reserve, 19 sites have been identified which were used as seasonal camps while gathering abalone and mussels or grinding seeds and acorns into meal. Today, signs of the Ohlone's former presence can be found in many forms: black dirt from years of campsite fires, grinding stones, and large mounds of cast-away shells called middens.

The Spanish Period

The Ohlone living near Point Lobos may have been the first indigenous people encountered by Spanish exploring expeditions, beginning in 1602 when Sebastian Vizcaino's ship entered Carmel Bay. About 170 years later, the Portola expedition on the move north from San Diego camped along San Jose Creek. Portola's assignment was to find a route from Mexico (then part of the Spanish empire) to Monterey, and along the way, locate suitable places to establish the soon-to-follow missions and military camps called presidios. This expedition also ushered in the Spanish Colonial period of California history which lasted until 1822.

The second of 21 Spanish missions was established at Monterey in 1770, but within a year it was moved to Carmel and named San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. The mission's cowboys, or vaqueros, tended herds of cattle on the nearby grasslands and became the first non-native people to use what is now Point Lobos State Reserve property. It was also during the era of Spanish occupation that Point Lobos was first named, when the barking of sea lions inspired the name Punta de los Lobos Marinos, Point of the Sea Wolves.

The Mexican Period

Soon after Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1822, the new government began a policy of awarding land grants to loyal Mexican citizens, one of whom was Don Marcelino Escobar, a distinguished official in Monterey. The property that now makes up the Reserve was once part of an 8,818 acre grant given to Escobar in 1839. A couple of years later, the land was sold to Dona Josefa de Abrego for $250, or about 3 cents an acre. Dona Joesfa held onto the property for about a year. Then, in a curious transaction where no money changed hands, she deeded the land to a group of soldiers stationed at the Monterey Presidio. The soldiers maintained possession of the land for six months, then in 1844 gave it to their superior officer, Jose Castro. After California was annexed from Mexico by the United States in 1848, Castro's claim to the land was reviewed by a commission established to sort out the multiple claims to private property in the new territory. Complicating matters further, Castro sold the land. Other claims to the property were filed, and it was not until 1888 that this tangled web was settled by a patent signed by President Grover Cleveland. After everything was said and done, the original Mexican land grant had been divided into 34 parcels. A month after President Cleveland signed the patent, several owners of the parcels in and around Point Lobos sold their interests to the Carmelo Land and Coal Company. Now, for the first time in 45 years, most of the old rancho including Point Lobos was under single ownership.

Whaling Activities at Point Lobos

Portuguese whalers from the Azore Islands arrived at Point Lobos in 1862 and set up living quarters on the east side of Whalers Cove. Comprising one of 16 shore whaling stations established on the west coast of California, the whalers and their families made up a small community of 50-60 people. About 15-20 men were part of a crew that hunted gray whales which migrate along the California coast between mid-December and May. From the top of Whalers Knoll, a lookout would spot passing whales, then raise a flag to signal the crews down at the cove. Open-top boats were rowed out to sea where men would try their luck with harpoons. If a whale was killed, it was towed back to the cove, hoisted out of the water and its blubber sliced into large strips. Next the blubber was cut into smaller chunks and melted in large iron cauldrons called "try pots", to produce an oil used primarily for lamp fuel. With the advent of kerosene lamps in the late 1880's, demand for whale oil slacked off and the local whaling industry fell on hard times. There was a brief revival of whaling operations at Point Lobos in 1897 when a Japanese company set up business, but this operation lasted only a few years.

The Whaling Station Museum at Whalers Cove documents the historic whaling activities at Point Lobos with displays of historic whaling equipment and exhibit panels describing the lives of the whalers and their families. Next to the museum, you can see two of the old try pots used to boil whale blubber and view part of an almost 100-year-old fin-back whale skeleton.

Abalone Harvesting

As you walk along the Reserve's trails, chances are good that you will find fragments of iridescent abalone shell scattered about. The rocky shores of Point Lobos provide a perfect habitat for this muscular mollusk. Abalone meat has long been considered a delicacy in many cultures and its shell prized for use as mother-of-pearl furniture inlay and the manufacture of jewelry and buttons. While the Ohlone gathered abalone at Point Lobos, it was not until the Chinese arrived in the early 1850's that it was harvested commercially.

Soon after the California gold rush of 1849, historians believe a small group of Chinese fishermen and their families set sail from southern China in 30-foot junks. Following the prevailing winds and ocean currents, they probably arrived at Point Lobos around 1851 and established what may be the first Chinese fishing settlement in California. By 1853 more Chinese arrived from the gold fields and settled along the coast at nearby Monterey. Word quickly spread about the abundant abalone beds and before long several hundred Chinese were engaged in the local abalone harvesting business. They also understood the rich potential of the sea and diversified their catch to include squid, sea urchins and a variety of fish. The Chinese settlement at Point Lobos consisted of about a dozen buildings, one of which remains and now houses the Whalers Cabin Museum.

In the mid-1890's, a young marine biologist from Japan, Gennosuke Kodani, arrived at Point Lobos to investigate reports of rich beds of abalone in the area and soon sent for workers from his native village of Chiba. At first, abalone near the shore were harvested and dried in the sun on wooden racks set up along Coal Chute Point at the north side of Whalers Cove. As the supply of shallow-water abalone dwindled, the workers donned hard-hat diving suits and ventured out on boats into deeper water. Using hand-powered pumps to supply air to the divers, the Japanese at Point Lobos pioneered an industry that eventually spread up and down the California coast.

Around 1899, Kodani formed a partnership with Alexander Allan, who had recently purchased the property that now forms the Reserve, and together they established an abalone cannery which was located at what is now the Whalers Cove parking area. The cannery was so successful it eventually accounted for 75% of the abalone sold in California. It stayed in operation until 1928, and was dismantled in 1933 when the property became a state reserve. The Kodani family home was located near Coal Chute Point and is shown on the Reserve's map as Kodani village.

Although abalone meat was popular in eastern cultures, it was not considered a gourmet item by most Americans until the 1920's, when a new recipe developed by "Pop" Doelter, a local restaurant owner, caught on and the abalone "steak" was introduced to the American palate. Doelter used the Whalers Cabin as his processing plant from 1918 to 1920.

Coal Mining

In the mid-1870's, coal was discovered in the coastal hills just a few miles southeast of Point Lobos. After being mined, the coal was hauled by horse-drawn wagons to the old county road, east of what is now Highway 1. It was then loaded into ore carts which travled along a short tramway to a coal chute built on a rocky point at the north side of Whalers Cove. The deep water of what is now called Coal Chute Point allowed coastal steamships close access to the point where they took on their load. The Carmel Land and Coal Company operated until the late 1890s when poor market conditions combined with high operating costs forced the mine to close. Behind the Whalers Cabin Museum, you will find an old ore cart similar to those used in that operation.

The Quarries

In 1855, a granite quarry was established at what is now the Whalers Cove parking area. Point Lobos granite was used to build the U.S. Mint in San Francisco and the Navy shipyards at Mare Island in San Francisco Bay.

About 30 years later, a gravel quarry was operating at the Pit, a small cove nestled between Coal Chute Point and Granite Point. Today, visitors can walk on the Pit's gravel beach and trace the old haul road, now the Moss Cove Trail, to the Reserve's northern boundary at Monastery Beach.

The War Years

It may be hard to imagine, but Point Lobos was once the site of "secret" military operations. By the summer of 1942 both the U.S. Army and Air Force occupied the Reserve, which was closed to civilians for the duration of World War II.

As early as December of 1941, a unit of the U.S. Army Coastal Defense Squad set up anti-aircraft gun emplacements and used the Whalers Cabin as their headquarters. They were followed in August of 1942 by the 4th Air Force Signal Corps Unit which used the Reserve as a site for their long-range radar equipment. Eighty men from this unit were housed in a tent camp located near the Reserve's entrance station and a radar station was installed on Whalers Knoll. While crude by today's standards, the radar station used the best technology available at that time and could detect objects as far as 150 miles away.

In 1943, the Army used Whalers Cove as the site of a school to train soldiers of the 543rd Amphibious Brigade in the use of amphibious landing craft. Their drills included landing the boats on the beach, then scambling up to the meadow. This brigade was subsequently involved in 60 landings in the Southwest Pacific.

A Park is Born

Beginning in 1890, a series of events began which would eventually lead to the establishment of today's state reserve. Coal mining near Point Lobos had become unprofitable, so the Carmel Land and Coal company subdivided the area around Whalers Cove into 1,000 residential lots for a development that was first named Point Lobos city but which soon became known as Carmelito.

Several years after the Carmelito subdivision was laid out, an engineer from Illinois, Alexander M. Allan, purchased 640 acres of the mining company's property at Point Lobos. Already a successful race track architect and real estate developer, Allan moved into a ranch house at Point Lobos in 1898 and set about to repurchase the Carmelito lots which had already been sold. Allan, like many others, recognized that Point Lobos was a unique and special place which should be preserved. Concerned over the environmental impact of an ever-increasing number of visitors interested in seeing the cypress trees and scenic coastline, Allan and his wife, Satie, set up a tollgate, prohibited camping, and allowed picnic fires only in specified areas.

Meanwhile, interest in preserving Point Lobos as a national or state park was gaining momentum. As scientists and foresters studied the Monterey cypress trees growing at Point Lobos and Cypress Point on the north side of Carmel Bay, they realized these trees do not naturally grow anywhere else in the world. By the mid-1920's, the Save-the-Redwoods League was actively involved in an effort to preserve the Monterey cypress. They hired the internationally known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, to research Point Lobos and report on the areas most noteworthy of preservation. Olmstead's report described Point Lobos as "the most outstanding example on the coast of California of picturesque rock and surf scenery in combination withy unique vegetation, including typical Monterey cypress." With assistance from the Save-the-Redwoods League, the State of California purchased 348 acres at Point Lobos from the Allan family in 1933. Another 15 acres of cypress-covered headlands were given to the state by the Allan family and dedicated as a memorial to Alexander and Satie Allan. Further land additions have expanded the reserve to almost 400 acres now open to the public. In 1960, 750 underwater acres were added to create the first marine reserve in the United States. The marine reserve was designated an ecological reserve in 1973, and in 1992 became part of the Monterey Bay National Marine sanctuary, the nation's largest marine sanctuary.