Big Sur Coast

The earliest Big Sur inhabitants, the Esselen people, once occupied a 25 mile long and 10 mile wide stretch of coast from Point Sur to near Lucia in the south. A small group of Ohlone, the Sargenta-Ruc people, lived from south of the Palo Colorado Canyon to the Big Sur River's mouth. Though most of the area's Salinan peoples lived inland in the Salinas Valley near what is now Fort Hunter-Liggett, villages were also scattered along the Big Sur coast south of Lucia. Little is known about the area natives, since mission-forced intertribal marriages and introduced diseases soon obliterated them. It is known, though, that the number of Esselens in Big Sur were estimated between 900 and 1,300 when the Spanish arrived after 1770 and that the Esselen people lived in the Big Sur alley at least 3,000 years ago.

The Esselen people were long gone by the time the first area settlers arrived. The name Big Sur ("Big South" in Spanish, a reference point from the Monterey perspective) comes from Rio Grande del Sur, or the Big Sur River, which flows to the sea at Point Sur. The river itself was the focal point of the 1834 Mexican land grant and the Cooper family's Rancho El Sur until 1965.

Then, in the early 1900s, came the highway, a hazardous 15 year construction project between Big Sur proper and San Simeon. Hardworking Chinese laborers were recruited for the job along with less willing workers from the state's prisons. The highway was completed in 1937, though many lives and much equipment was lost in the sea. Maintaining this remote stretch of road is still a treacherous task. Following the winter storms of 1982-83, for example, 42 landslides blocked the highway; the "big one" near Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park took 19 bulldozers and more than a year to clear. The road was officially dedicated as the state's first scenic highway by Lady Bird Johnson in 1966.

Rainbow Bridge, now called Bixby Creek Bridge, at 260 feet high and 700 feet long was the highest single-arch bridge in the world when it was constructed in 1932. It is still the most photographed of all Big Sur bridges.

Point Sur Lighthouse, an 1889 sandstone structure, sitting atop Point Sur, sit above a shipwreck site once known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. In the days when the only way to get here was on horseback, 395 wooden stair steps led to the lighthouse, originally a giant multi-wick kerosene lantern surrounded by a Fresnel lens with a 16 panel prism. The Point Sur Lighthouse is now computer operated and features an electrical aero-beacon, radio beacon, and fog "diaphone." This 34 acre area and its central rocky mound is now a state park, though the Coast Guard still maintains the lighthouse.

Nepenthe, (1 mile S of Ventana Inn) then known as to Trails Club Log Cabin, was bought by Orsen Welles for his wife Rita Hayworth in 1944. Unfortunately, Hayworth hated the place, and they only spent a few hours here one afternoon, arguing about curtains, and left, never to return. Welles's place became known as Nepenthe shortly after he sold it in 1947.

The restaurant was named for an ancient Egyptian drug taken to help people forget. the name means "surcease from sorrows." Although Nepenthe is casual any time of year, it's not that casual; John F. Kennedy was once turned away because he showed up barefoot.

The Henry Miller Library has a collection about the writer and his life's work