Conservation: The Bid Sur Saved

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"There's a lot of loose talk about this being the most beautiful spot in the world," mused Architect Nathaniel Owings last week. "Well, it is.'' More and more people are coming to agree with him about the stretch of Cali fornia coastline known as Big Sur. thereby causing Architect Owings and his fellow settlers much mental anguish. He and the settlers were glad to have people look on Big Sur's beauty. But if too many lookers decided to stay, it would no longer be worth looking at. Today, thanks to a combination of thoughtful foresight and democratic procedure, the residents of Big Sur are breathing easier.

Untamed & Drenched. The first Californians. the Spanish, called it El Sur Grande, the Big South — a wild and wonderful coastline that begins 150 miles south of San Francisco where the Santa Lucia mountains plunge vertiginously into the foam-fringed Pacific, then soars and tumbles along 72 miles of redwood-studded promontories, bare earth cliffs and sandy beaches to San Luis Obispo. 200 miles north of Los Angeles. And while most of the California coast was sprouting pink motels, filling stations, and the cantilevered eyries of the rich, this stretch of Monterey County kept its rugged beauty.

Main reason was that the Big South like an untamed stallion, does its best to shake men loose. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds roar and whistle in its crags and canyons, rain drenches it (sometimes as much as 72 in. in three months), earth quakes shudder through the ground, and termites thrive and multiply. The people who came to such a country and stayed were, first of all, hardy, lonely pioneers and, secondly, oddball fugitives from the world of modern convenience.

Novelist Henry (Tropic of Cancer) Miller settled at Big Sur in 1944, found it a place "of grandeur and of eloquent silence," and attracted a group of pre-beatnik sandal wearers of all sexes, who gathered evenings for drinks and folk dancing at Nepenthe, once the house of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth but now the region's most famous and almost only tavern, run by an intellectual refugee from San Francisco named Bill Fassett. Then came another brand of fugitive to Big Sur's beauty, such as retired Editor-Publisher William L. Chenery. ex-Diplomat-Journalist Nicholas Roosevelt, a cousin of Teddy, a Roman Catholic order of monks called Hermits of New Camaldoli, and Architect Owings, co-founder of the huge architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Master Plan. The population is still sparse—less than 700 in some 125,000 acres. But alert Big Sureans could discern the beginnings of encroachment: Carmel Highlands, just above Big Sur. has been blotched by free-for-all development, and San Luis Obispo to the south is a well-known eyesore. Tourism began to boom; in 1952 only 2,500 tourist cars passed through Big Sur on an average summer Sunday' in 1961 it was up to 6,000. and last year 8,863 cars were turned away at Pfeiffer-Big Sur State Park for lack of camping facilities. Big Sur's inhabitants realized that their fastness was about to be discovered by the motelmen and the real estate developers.