Pebble Beach, California

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"The Lone Cypress" is a famous landmark in Pebble Beach
"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 coastal unincorporated community in Monterey County, California. Best known as a resort destination, the area is home to the famous golf course, Pebble Beach Golf Links.

Technically, Pebble Beach is not a city at all, but rather a corporation owned by the Pebble Beach Company. Residents therefore pay homeowners' fees for road maintenance as well as Monterey County 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 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.

The ZIP Code is 93953, and the community is inside area code 831.

Contents

[edit] Demographics

The community has 4,531 residents and is relatively affluent, home to many retirees and well-educated workers in the social service (education and health care), management and finance sectors. While Monterey County is mostly Hispanic,[citation needed] Pebble Beach is more ethnically homogenous, with 91.4% of the population being White, 5.3% Asian, 2.3% Hispanic or Latino and 0.4% African American. The median household income is 99,788, with 54% with incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 and a little more than a quarter of households, 26.2%, with incomes exceeding $150,000. Household income figures, however, may not accurately reflect the area's wealth as 50.8% of households received social security income and 30.8% were retired. Less than half of the population 16 or over, 46.4%, are employed. Of those who work, the plurality (25%) are employed in the social service, education and health care sector, followed by the management (15%) and finance sectors (15%). 2.3% of the population lives below the poverty level. The area's adult population is fairly well-educated, with 61% having at least a Bachelor's degree, and 98% having a high school diploma, compared to 25% and 80% at the national average, respectively.[1]

[edit] 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 Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (formerly known as the Bing Crosby "clambake") is held here every year in February.

[edit] History

The Pebble Beach Company was originally created as the Del Monte Properties Company in 1919 by Samuel F. B. Morse, (not the inventor of the Morse Code and telegraph, as that Samuel Morse died in 1872). In the early 1900s, Morse was appointed manager for the Pacific Improvement Company, an affiliate of the vast Southern Pacific Railroad, 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).

Samuel Morse died in 1969. Alfred Gawthrop, Jr, was Chairman of Del Monte Properties for some time before its sale to Marvin Davis (see below).

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 controversial 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.

[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 State Route 1. Santa Cruz and San Francisco are about 45 and 120 miles to the north, respectively.

[edit] Geology

Pebble Beach owes much of its picturesque qualities to the granitic rock outcroppings visible along the coast. These are characteristic of the Salinian Block, a geologic province which runs from the Baja California Peninsula and up through California west of the San Andreas Fault.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Other features

The Lone Cypress, a symbol of the city, as seen from 17-Mile Drive
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 golf courses, a private school, 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.

Pebble Beach is a gated community, but differs from most gated communities. The Pebble Beach Company gets $9.25 in revenue per car from tourists driving along the 17-Mile Drive. Residents are issued small license plate badges that are attached near their cars' license plates.

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.

The public schools serving Pebble Beach are located in Pacific Grove: Forest Grove School, Pacific Grove Middle School, and Pacific Grove High School. Pebble Beach is also home to Stevenson School, a coed half-boarding, half-day private high-school, and KSPB an alternative radio station run by the high school.

[edit] Famous residents

[edit] Gallery

Dunes Course at Monterey Peninsula Club

The Lodge at Pebble Beach

A deer at Pebble Beach

18th hole at Pebble Beach

A bagpipe player at the Links at Spanish Bay

[edit] References

  1. ^ U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). Del Monte Forest CDP, California: Census 2000 Demographic Highlights. Retrieved from the U.S. Census Bureau.. Retrieved on 2007-12-13.

[edit] External links

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Municipalities and communities of
Monterey County, California
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