Botanically, Pebble Beach is a wizard's garden. Cypress trees, rare to begin with, grow here in wondrous concoctions and spin out enchanting scenes.
The branches reach out into the fog for life. Streaming west, they weave mysteries into the atmosphere. Ichobod Crane would be quite at home. Ghost trees, bleached by ages of sea spray dance up to thickets of Bishop Pines in a strange and haunting mix with wild flora.
This is the only town in America where an outsider has to pay to get in. To be among such an exquisite mating of sea and land, is a very uncommon experience, and considered worth a price.
The folks who live here have paid a lot to dwell in a natural setting. And, they've vowed, legislated, and put up gates to keep it that way.
Then, again, this is a forest, not a town. And, some of California's biggest moguls built castles here.
By this exclusivity they may not have put a price on nature, but they put a value on not destroying it.
Charlie Chaplin frequented Pebble Beach in the early days. He would hang out with Robinson Jeffers and John Steinbeck. According to biographer Jackson Benson, Charles, Jr said his father was fascinated by Steinbeck's books and used to drive around the countryside where his stories were liad, trying to place the characters in the book in their proper locations." For Chaplin, Pebble Beach was a center of the Steinbeck literary world, and made a bood base camp for these explorations.
