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CARMEL VALLEY
ECHOES
PUBLISHED BY THE RESIDENTS OF CARMEL VALLEY MANOR, CARMEL, CALIFORNIA
Vol. I - No. 3 January, 1964
A VENTURE IN THE VALLEY- by Ethel W. Tileston
We now probe further into the past and farther up the valley for some
reminiscences as related to us by two of our residents, Miss Helen Lisle
and Miss Celinea Wells, affectionately known by the sobriquet given them
in Carmel 38 years ago - The Valley Girls.
Possessed of the old New England pioneer spirit, plus a yen to give up
their successful elementary private school in Milton, Mass. and start
another in a less sophisticated spot, they came in the summer of 1926
to Carmel to search for a location.
"We spent a week," they tell us, "looking up and down
the coast but found nothing that suited. Then we drove out Carmel Valley
over
a winding dirt road, lined on the south with large pear orchards and
on the north with great cattle ranches, until we came to the top of the
hill
just beyond what is now called the Farm Center. We stopped, gave one
look and said, 'This is it'."
After much persuasion and a down payment of $500.00 a rancher across the
river agreed to rent them a small unfurnished house and to "go along
with them." So they returned to Milton, disposed of their school,
recruited seven fourth and fifth grade children of proper but trusting
Bostonians (what a tribute!) and two counselors; brought them back to
Carmel where they all put up at the old Pine Inn. Then followed a few
hectic days of buying furniture and equipment for the house, hiring a
Chinese cook and a vaquero, and arranging for horses for everyone. They
bought a banana wagon (the 1926 term for station wagon) and they were
off.
"We had to drive across the dry river bed to reach the house, as
the only bridge was a small suspension foot bridge. The first night there
was an earthquake. Rains came in November and Thanksgiving night the
rancher
aroused us saying we must get the banana wagon across to the road QUICK
as the river was rising fast. We weren't quick enough and our means of
transportation got stuck. However, the next day the rancher came with
two Percherons and a whiffle tree and they got our banana wagon across
to the road where we left it so it would always be available.
"When we brought supplies back from town two children on horseback
hauled them by lariat in a small express wagon across the suspension bridge
up to the house.
"The children did their lessons, took care of their horses, helped
around the ranch, and Saturdays and Sundays we all rode to Point Lobos
where 'Now', the cook, who had gone ahead in the banana wagon and built
a fire, was ready for us with a good hot lunch."
The next year they came back with twelve children and carried on where
they were until 1929 when they sensed sophistication pursuing them. The
road was surfaced as far as the Farm Center, gentleman farmers (locally
called "furriners") were moving in, ranches were being cut up,
fences built, horseback riding curtailed. So - "we bought sixteen
acres of a two thousand acre ranch thirty miles up the valley, built
a
house and moved the school. There were twenty-five of us by that time,
eight boys, eight girls, counselors, cook and ranch hands."The road
was terrible but the place was wonderful. Right near us was the trail
over Haystack Hill which the Padres from San Diego used when they walked
to the Carmel Mission. We could hear mountain lions, ice formed in the
horse troughs, provisions had to be brought way out from town." Why
not from the Carmel Valley village? we interrupted. "There was no
village. Just the dirt road and ranches, and gorgeous country. It was
a grand life for all of us, and believe it or not, when we closed the
school in 1934, the boys were all able to enter schools like Milton and
Groton and the girls did just as well."
"Did closing the school mean that you then moved out of the Valley?"
we asked.
"Oh, dear no. We used to motor into Monterey every day and learned
to play golf. Then we started raising chinchillas. We started with a
few
of our own and other people used to bringing their chinchillas for us
to raise. We caged in the boys' sleeping porches and ran a regular chinchilla
farm. We had three hundred. Then the war came along and the County Superintendent
of Schools insisted that it was our duty to teach the seven children
living
in that locality as there wasn't enough gas to run a bus for them. Then
the Army picked on our ranch as the ideal spot for airplane watching."
So through the war days Miss Lisle taught the children, Miss Wells reared
the chinchillas, and at night they took turns airplane watching.
"Then what did you do?" we asked breathlessly.
"We retired to Carmel."