"The Lone Cypress" is a famous landmark in Pebble Beach
Pebble Beach is a small private coastal unincorporated community in
Monterey County, California which is best known as a golf destination and also
one of the highest profile spots in the US.
Technically, Pebble Beach is not a city at all, but rather a corporation owned by the
Pebble Beach Company and managed as a small town. Residents therefore pay homeowners' fees
in lieu of city property taxes. The community's post
office is named Pebble Beach, but the U.S. Census Bureau regards the
land as part of the larger census-designated place of Del Monte Forest. The area is also partly administrated also by the Del Monte
Forest Foundation, a non-profit organization designated by Monterey County and the California Coastal Commission, and comprising of a volunteer board of 12 persons
interested in preserving the open space within the Del Monte Forest. Except for two representatives of the Pebble Beach Company,
all must be property owners and residents of the Forest.
Golf
Pebble Beach has seven public and private 18-hole golf courses. Pebble Beach Golf
Links, The Links at Spanish Bay, and Spyglass
Hill are owned by the Pebble Beach Company and are all public courses. The other four courses in the town are
Poppy Hills which is public, the private Cypress Point Club, and the private Monterey
Peninsula Country Club's two courses, the Dunes Course and the Shore Course. The Pebble Beach Company also owns a nine
hole par-3 course in Pebble Beach called the Peter Hay course, and Del Monte Golf Course a few
miles away in Monterey, which is the oldest continuously operating course in the Western United States. Several of these courses
are widely celebrated, especially Pebble Beach Golf Links, which is the most famous course in the Western United States, and the
only course which has ever beaten Pine Valley Golf Club to top spot in
Golf Digest's biennial list of America's 100 greatest courses.
The AT&T Pro-Am (formerly known as the Bing
Crosby "clambake") is held here every year in February.
History
The Pebble Beach Company was originally created as the Del Monte Properties Company in 1919 by Samuel F. B. Morse, a distant relative of the telegraph inventor Samuel Morse. In the early 1900s, Morse was appointed manager for the Pacific Improvement Company,
which had extensive real estate holdings on the Monterey Peninsula, and in 1919 he
formed the Del Monte Properties Company and acquired those holdings, which included the Del Monte Forest and the popular
Hotel Del Monte (now the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey).
In 1978, 20th Century Fox purchased the company and
renamed it Pebble Beach Company. When the film company was sold to Rupert Murdoch in
1985, Fox's owner at the time, Marvin Davis, kept several
company assets not directly related to the film and TV industry, including the Pebble Beach Company and the Aspen Skiing Company.
In 1990 Davis sold the Pebble Beach Company to the Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani, who made it a subsidiary of the
Japanese resort company Taiheiyo Club Inc under a holding company called the Lone
Cypress Company.
In 1999 the Pebble Beach Company was acquired from Lone Cypress by an investor group led by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer, and Peter Ueberroth. In 2000, the company initated Measure A, a controversal development proposal. Eastwood appeared in a $1 million advertising
campaign urging voters to help save the forest. After the initiative passed in 2001, the public called the campaign "bait and
switch" when it became clear that the proposal included cutting down 18,000 trees and developing protected wetlands to make way
for a golf course, homes, equestrian center and resort development. In 2006, the plan went before the California Coastal
Commission for approval. When it was clear that Measure A would be denied, the Pebble Beach Company pulled it. On June 14, 2007,
the plan was submitted again. Commissioner Sara Wan called it "wholesale destruction of the environment," and Measure A was
denied in an 8 to
4 vote. Opposition to the plan was spearheaded by Mark Massara, a surfer and attorney who heads the Sierra Club's coastal program.
Geography
Pebble Beach is in Monterey County on the Monterey Peninsula at 36°35′27″N, 121°56′46″W. It is bordered by
Carmel-by-the-Sea to the south, Pacific Grove to the north, the City of Monterey
to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Big Sur
is about a 40 mile drive south on scenic California State Route 1.
Santa Cruz and San Francisco
are about 45 and 120 miles to the north, respectively.
Environmental issues
There are several habitat types within Pebble Beach, including intertidal zone, littoral zone and pine forest. There are a
number of rare and endangered species in the Del Monte Forest either in Pebble Beach or in adjacent Monterey. One of the rare and
endangered plants found in the Del Monte Forest is Hickman's potentilla, where this
plant was first discovered by Alice Eastwood in the year 1900.
Other features
The Lone Cypress, a symbol of the city, as seen from
17-Mile Drive
Pebble Beach has few businesses apart from those owned by the Pebble Beach Company (except the other golf courses, one gas station, and a deli) and no sidewalks. Most of the very expensive houses are hidden
behind old-growth trees. It is quiet, secluded, and somewhat gloomy in foggy weather,
which occurs quite frequently on the Peninsula in general, and in particular here where it meets the Pacific head-on.
The 17-Mile Drive is the main road through the Del Monte Forest. It is a toll-road and
costs $9.00 to enter without a pass. Another famous Pebble Beach attraction is the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance auto show. It
focuses on classic cars, but manufacturers have lately begun introducing new
luxury car models there.
Pebble Beach is home to Stevenson School, a coed half-boarding, half-day private
high-school, and KSPB an alternative radio station run by the high-school.
Famous residents
Gallery
Dunes Course at Monterey Peninsula Club
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The Lodge at Pebble Beach
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18th hole at Pebble Beach
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A bagpipe player at the Links at Spanish Bay
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External links
Coordinates:
36.59081° N 121.946105°
W
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