Pacific Grove at Your Feet by Joyce Krieg

Author:Joyce Krieg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Place Publications
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

We shall start this walk in the middle, as there is no place to leave a car at either end. Park anywhere on the city streets at the intersection of Sinex and Crocker avenues and make your way to a replica of the original Asilomar passenger shelter, located just north of the intersection. Its design was used throughout the Southern Pacific line for passenger shelters and is known as a Greek cross. Walls intersect at 90 degree angles, forming the backs of seats and accommodating more passengers than you might think possible at first glance for such a small structure. An overhanging pyramid-shaped roof provided protection from rain, or in the case of Asilomar in the summertime, dense fog.

After admiring the craftsmanship and cleverness of design, turn to the south, crossing Sinex Avenue. As you pick up the dirt path, look to your feet. At the time of this writing, a few inches of what look to me like track are visible on the right side of the trail. Or perhaps that’s my over-active imagination at work once again.

This section of old railbed on which we tread represents the last quarter mile or so of track that at one time serviced a sand mining operation at what is now the Spanish Bay resort in Pebble Beach. As we proceed along the trail, Hayward Lumber will be on your left, the Asilomar Conference Grounds to your right.

Use caution as you cross Sunset Drive, often busy with motor vehicle and bicycle traffic on weekends and during summer months. Once across Sunset, the path resumes between Pacific Grove Self-Storage and the Fishwife restaurant.

Back in the days when the freight trains still ran, the tracks split into two spurs at this point, both serving a sand mining operation at what was then known as Lake Majella. More of a pond than an actual lake, this was either a natural tidal swamp or a man-made byproduct of the sand mine. Or perhaps a combination of both. A fading mural on the side of German Motorwerks, 95 Central Avenue (best seen from the entrance to the next-door restaurant) depicting two Victorian ladies navigating a raft on Lake Majella lends credibility to the existence of a natural body of water before the sand mine arrived—unless it’s purely the product of the muralist’s imagination.

If you’ve ever walked barefoot on the beaches at Asilomar or Spanish Bay, you know the special qualities of our local sand, pure white and fine-grained. I’m fond of saying it’s like walking through powdered sugar. Turns out, these tiny, high-grade quartz crystals are ideal for making glass. And thus was born the Del Monte Sand Company. The freight trains arrived in the afternoon, sometimes as many as 20 or 30 cars, to pick up sand that had already been washed, dried and bagged in the factory.

Keith Larson recalls “a spooky old sand plant, a collection of buildings which could be made even more mysterious by the incoming fog.” Long-time Pagrovians have vivid memories of

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