Coastside History
Eating on the Coastside: Food Through the Ages
By Laureen Diephof
The areas in which we live—and where our ancestors originated—influence our food preferences. Look back into your life and remember family dinners, picnics, school-lunch-pail food, and the ethnicity of the meals you remember with fondness.
The Ohlone—the First Coastsiders
This article approaches how Coastside peoples—the Ohlone, Spanish, Californios, Gold Rushers, and World War II folks in the area—secured their food, and the tools and the cooking systems they used to prepare it. Read More >>
Miramar: Small Town/Big History
By Jo Fry
Miramar is known for its restaurants and sunsets. With a population just over 2,000 people, it seems a sleepy, upscale, nice place to visit.
It wasn’t always the case, and I’ve found artifacts to prove it.
This small section of the coast has seen human activity for thousands of years. Inhabited by first nation people, it also had a place in Spanish Mission history, in the earliest days of the town of Halfmoon Bay, played a role during prohibition, and in California defense during World War II. Not bad for a small section of the coast.The areas in which we live—and where our ancestors originated—influence our food preferences. Look back into your life and remember family dinners, picnics, school-lunch-pail food, and the ethnicity of the meals you remember with fondness. Read More >>
Ohlone Basketweavers: Women’s Essential Creations
By Mary Ruddy
The woman looked out to the ocean, letting her eyes rest awhile. She had been working for a long time on the very small, intricate weaving of the plants beneath her hands. It took such time and care to make sure that once filled with water, her new cooking basket would not leak. She had worked all morning in the meadows around the village, harvesting wildflower seeds like Clarkias in a seed basket. The seeds would be roasted on a roasting basket tray by rolling a hot coal around in them, and then made into a nourishing paste added to meals. Read more >>
More About Ohlone Basketry
By Mary Ruddy
California’s native peoples have long been considered the most skilled of all basket creators. Their diverse functionality and beauty made those baskets desirable to 19 th -century Russian traders along the Mendocino and Marin coastlines. To this day, the best of all California Native American baskets, including Ohlone ones, are in Russian museums. In California after European contact, colonization, disease, loss of plant habitat, and loss of Ohlone territory and autonomy meant that the baskets of peoples like the Ohlone were lost, their art and function no longer valued by those in power. Today the closest we can come to admiring the lost Ohlone baskets is to see the baskets of their nearest neighbors, the Pomo from beyond the northernmost Spanish missions. Read more >>
Half Moon Bay History Revealed Through Glass
By Jo Fry
Visit the Half Moon Bay Jail Museum and one of the first displays to greet you are bottles – glass in a variety of heights, shapes and colors that at first glance look no different from what you can buy today at Cunha’s. Look closer, however, and you’ll notice odd differences: advertising embossed up the side for a curious cure that the FDA would surely never approve of, glass in a blushing lavender hue, a warning not to refill, even one that can’t stand up. Read more >>
Ohlone—The First Coastsiders
By Ellen Chiri
The first people on this fertile coastal terrace believed that they came from the earth. In their first 14,000 years here, they developed a way of life that was centered on caring for the land. The people now referred to collectively as Ohlone were organized into at least 50 politically autonomous tribal groups that spoke several dialects. Extended clans formed villages, each of which included societal organizations. Read more >>
Basic Guide to Bottle Age Identification
By Jo Fry
Say you’re planting a new tree in your backyard, and you dig a hole deeper than you’ve had to dig before. In the hole you find a glass bottle that you didn’t put there. How can you identify the bottle? How can you tell if it is old or just a piece of modern recycling that the previous owner left behind?
Use this basic guide to help you identify a bottle’s age….
Manufacturing technological advances were adopted over time, not all at once, so older techniques were used at the same time as newer ones. This makes determining exact age for a bottle that wasn’t machine-made a little tricky. But, by looking at a few basic characteristics, you can learn if you want to toss your find in the recycling bin or place it at the center of your mantle. Read More >>
Ghosts on the Coast
By Ellen Chiri
Coastside history is filled with vivid stories of the vivid people who lived here. Those who have passed are no longer here bodily, but might some still be here, in some form? A few hauntings, reported by various sources…
The Blue Lady of the Moss Beach Distillery is notorious. During Prohibition, a young married woman often visited what was then Frank’s Place. She always dressed in blue. She and the bar’s piano player began an affair that ended badly when, during a late-night tryst on the beach, they were assaulted by the woman’s husband. They say the piano-player survived, but the Blue Lady died of stab wounds. Or… did she die in an automobile accident on her way to meet her lover? Both stories have been told. However she met her corporeal end, her spirit walks the Distillery to this day. Read more >>
Rancho Arroyo de los Pilarcitos
By Joaquin Jimenez
Arroyo de los Pilarcitos was the land grant that Juan José Candelario Miramontes, an officer at the Presidio in San Francisco, was granted by the Mexican government.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American war in 1848. The California Land Act of 1851 honored the Treaty, intending to protect Mexican citizens’ property rights. However, the Land Act required landowners to prove their titles in American courts, and many lost their property trying to litigate under the new American legal system Read more >>
What is That Thing?
By Ellen Chiri
This cement pylon, anchored on the reef just offshore below the Moss Beach Distillery, is a weathered remnant of World War II military operations. During the war, the Navy operated an anti-aircraft training center on the bluffs at Point Montara.
When artillery target practice was in progress a flag was hoisted atop the pylon, to warn local air and marine traffic. In addition to gunnery practice, the Navy trainees learned how to use the first-generation radar that was newly develope Read More >>
The Rich History of Pillar Point
By Marc Strohlein
Pillar Point is perhaps best known as the site of the big “golf ball” radar installation, and for Mavericks, the surfing location. Dig a little deeper, however, and it turns out that it has an interesting and varied history that spans Native American dwellers, Spanish explorers, World War ll-era defense, rocket and missile tracking, and even a bombing by a radical domestic terrorist group.
The earliest known inhabitants in the Pillar Point area were the Ohlone Native Americans, who the Spanish called Costanoans, or “coastal people.” University of California anthropologist Nels Nelson discovered evidence of their existence in the course of his survey of Bay Area shell mounds conducted in the early 1900 Read More >>
Two Saloons and a Mortuary
By Ellen Chiri
The Coastside was bustling around the turn of the 20th century, and the many saloons added to the buzz.
The Index Saloon welcomed patrons at the corner of Kelly Avenue and Main Street in Half Moon Bay, in the building that later became Cunha’s Market. Reportedly the index against which all other saloons were measured, the Index shared the block with a mortuary—and with another saloon.
The Miller-Dutra funeral parlor opened in 1905 where it still stands today, at 645 Kelly Avenue. In what is now the Miller-Dutra parking lot at the corner of Kelly and Purissima stood a building that was first a residence and then a boarding house. Read more >>
Coastside North and South: Montara and Torquay
By Ellen Chiri
Montara rests like a jewel between its beach and towering mountain. It’s the first town you come to as you drive south from Pacifica; the last you pass through after leaving Moss Beach. Torquay would have been the most southerly Coastside town, between Franklin Point and Año Nuevo—but it never was a town at all.
Montara: Resort-to-be
For thousands of years the Coastside was home to the Ohlone, the first people here. Spanish explorers arrived, then Mexican land grantees. After the California gold discovery, immigrants from the United States and around the world flooded in. Read More >>
The Ormonde Family and the Holy Ghost Festival
By Rose Ormonde
The Holy Ghost Festival or Chamarita has been a part of my life since I was a small child. Some of my first childhood memories are of this annual Portuguese festival because my Dad, Ken Ormonde, was such an active member and officer of the local I.D.E.S. Society. He joined the I.D.E.S. as a young man just back from the Pacific theater in World War II. He served as President in 1973 and 1974 and later in 2003.
My Dad passed in 2014, but he left me a treasured legacy that is so precious to me now… His love and pride for his Portuguese heritage and the importance of contributing to your community. Read more >>
I.D.E.S. and the Holy Ghost Festival
By Ellen Chiri, with thanks to Bob Fernandez
In 1871, The Brotherhood of the I.D.E.S. Society, a Portuguese fraternal organization, was organized in Half Moon Bay. I.D.E.S. stands for Sociedade Da Irmandade do Divino Espirito Santo—the Society of the Divine Holy Spirit.
Portugal’s Queen Isabel, born in 1271, was very devout, and spent her life helping the poor and sick. She introduced celebrations of the Holy Spirit to Portugal, and its traditions became widespread in the Azore Islands. It is said that Queen Isabel would lead a procession to the church to celebrate Mass, carrying her crown, showing her submission to the will of God. People emulated these processions when in difficult situations, carrying a crown to the church to ask for God’s help. Read More >>
First Person: The Story of Philomena Beffa
By Chris Beffa
In January 1848, after gold was discovered on property in the California foothills owned by Swiss-German settler John Sutter, many Asians and Europeans emigrated to California. The California Gold Rush was definitely an incentive to emigrate to northern California, but it was not the only reason the influx continued in the following years. A chance to purchase inexpensive land with rich soil, a long growing season, plentiful water, and a mild climate were also factors in the migration from the agricultural Ticino region in southern Switzerland to California . Many Italian-speaking Swiss dairy farmers started migrating to California in the 1860s. Most of these Swiss dairy farmers came to settle in the areas around San Francisco, the Coast Ranges, or the Central Valley. Read more >>
Inventors and Innovators
By Marc Strohlein
The San Mateo coast is known for its bucolic scenery and beauty—not generally for its inventors. Yet Half Moon Bay and the surrounding communities boast some interesting and colorful inventors and innovators. Given the importance of farming to the area, it’s not surprising that many of the inventions are rooted in agrarian applications. A common theme throughout the innovations is that “necessity is the mother of invention,” as all of the innovations described in this article are responses to significant “real world” problems and needs.
The most visible and colorful inventor was Robert I Knapp, a farmer, blacksmith, newspaper publisher, politician, and most notably inventor of the side hill plow. Knapp watched farmers struggling to plow their land on the coastal hills using Kilgore plows which were heavy, clumsy and difficult to reverse the blade after each row was plowed. The plows were also not durable and after having repaired many, Knapp decided to make his own plow in 1873. Read More >>
Guadalupe Briones de Miramontes: Curandera
By Ellen Chiri
Maria Guadalupe Briones was the older sister of the renowned Juana Briones. Guadalupe was born in 1792 at Mission San Antonio, south of present-day King City; Juana was born in 1802 at Villa Branciforte, near Mission Santa Cruz.
Juana’s reputation as a ranchera, medical practitioner, and merchant is well-documented, but Guadalupe’s story is little known. In early life, Guadalupe worked as a curandera— a healer—at Mission Santa Clara. She later lived at the Presidio of San Francisco, where she continued to practice her medical skills and apply her healing ability.
At the Presidio, Guadalupe met and married Juan José Candelario Miramontes, who was an officer there. The couple were the owners of Rancho Miramontes, known also as Rancho San Benito, and Guadalupe continued to practice her healing art there. (The town that grew on the Miramontes land was called San Benito after the rancho, then later Spanishtown; it is now Half Moon Bay.) Read more >>
Shore Whaling at Pillar Point
By Marc Strohlein
Whale-watching along the California coast is now a popular activity, so it’s difficult to imagine how the magnificent creatures were once hunted for their blubber and other parts to make oil, soap, buggy whips, corset stays, and even for use as animal feed. Even more difficult to imagine is that the whales were hunted from shore whaling stations—a risky endeavor at best. Picture six-man crews in small boats rowing out through the surf to hunt 30-to-50-ton whales, armed only with harpoons and lances.
Shore whaling in California began at Monterey Bay around 1851, and was so successful that, during the latter half of the 1800s, an estimated 15 to 20 stations dotted the coast from San Diego to Crescent City, including locations at Pigeon Point and Pillar Point. It is difficult to pinpoint the actual years of operation, as accounts vary considerably. Read More >>
The First Hotel on Main Street’s First Block
By Dave Cresson
The Hotel Mosconi is the Coastside’s oldest and still operating hotel. Today it is called the San Benito House. A couple of weeks ago I received a call from friends, Betty and John Renati. They wanted to donate an old clock to the History Association. The clock was part of John’s family—and our community’s past. It hung on the wall of Hotel Mosconi.
The hotel is especially interesting to me because our family is part of its list of past managers. Since my days of involvement there, I have learned about the history of the hotel and of that particular block where the hotel still stands. Read more >>