Pebble Beach, California

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"The Lone Cypress" is a famous landmark in Pebble Beach

This article is about the community. For the golf course, see Pebble Beach Golf Links.

Pebble Beach is a small private coastal unincorporated community in Monterey County, California which is best known as a golf resort.

Technically, Pebble Beach is not a city at all, but a 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

Pebble Beach has seven public and private 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 Del Monte Golf Course a few miles away in Monterey, which is the oldest continuously operating course in the Western United States.

The AT&T Pro-Am (formerly known as the Bing Crosby "clambake") is held here every year in February. 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 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.

Pebble Beach is home to Stevenson School, a coed half-boarding, half-day private high-school.

1 History
2 Famous Residents
3 Geography
4 Environmental factors
5 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] Famous Residents

Clint Eastwood actor-director
George Lopez actor
Alan Shepard astronaut

[edit] Geography

Location of Del Monte Forest, California

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.

[edit] Environmental factors

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.