Colorful San Simeon village history and vintage small boat shore based whaling historic pictures

Click to enlarge this photograph of San Simeon Point, location of old whaling station & village San Simeon

This pristine looking 12 acre protrusion of California Coastline, San Simeon Point has at times been a bustling vibrant community. Where there now is hardly a sign of civilization have come and gone have been 50 or so buildings; including general store, a blacksmith shop, a barbershop, a saloon, a lavish hotel, a post office and homes for more than twenty families. More San Simeon Area Aerial Photos Like this from CCRP-www.californiacoastline.org/...

Quick Brief history of San Simeon California, Native American Indians, Spanish Cattle Ranchers, Hunters, Whalers, Swiss Dairymen and Senator George Hearst...

huge cast iron try-pots, you can see similar at the Visitors Center of Hearst Castle California State Historical Monument

from shore whaling being done from a small boat vintage photo

Long long ago a Native American Indian population lived in the area that would later become San Simeon . Later, following secularization of the San Miguel Mission in 1836 the governor of the then Spanish California divided the mission grazing lands into three ranchos: Piedras Blancas, 49,000 acres; Santa Rosa, 13,183 acres; and San Simeon, 4,468 acres. San Simeon was awarded to Jose Ramon Estrada as a Spanish Land Grant. Shortly thereafter came a small community of Chinese seaweed harvesters that settled by the bay around the mid-1800s.

Probably the area’s most active period was around 1852 when Portuguese whalers from the Azores established a whaling station at San Simeon Point. Sentinels on top the bluffs and look for the whales spouting as they surfaced to breathe; then when the whales were spotted, small boats were used to harpoon and harvest the whales. The whales were brought to the whaling station, and the oil was processed in huge try-pots (trypots) like the ones pictured above for shipment to San Francisco.

pictures showing how from shore whaling was done using small boats and on-shore processing

From the north Russian fur traders and Aleut hunters harvesting seals and sea otters came ashore at San Simeon for goods and services. At one time a group of Japanese settlers founded a business drying abalone also at San Simeon. After the drought of the 1860's, grazing land was considered too poor for livestock and the Spanish rancheros began to sell their land, and other settlers began to move into the area among them Swiss who brought in their dairies, and New Englanders brought their orchards. In 1865 California Senator George Hearst bought 45,000 acres including almost all of the San Simeon Rancho except the beautiful 12 acres of San Simeon Point but was eventually purchased by Hearst's widow Phoebe Hearst in 1894. Ships delivered supplies to San Simeon to be distibuted to north San Luis Obispo County, goods were picked up from from Pacific Coast ports from Seattle to San Diego and the port of San Simeon began shipping products of mining (quicksilver/mecury), ranching and whaling.

Steam ships and new technologies like rocket harpoons made it possible to hunt the larger faster whales and by 1880’s the small boat shore whaling industry declined and the village on the point associated with the whaling station began to disappear. The general store was moved on horse-drawn skids to its present site, which became the new location of the village of San Simeon. About that same time, Senator Hearst began building warehouses on the bluffs and built a new 1000 foot pier into San Simeon harbor to handle the largest ships of the time. Steel rails were constructed on the warf to allow flat cars to move cargo to and from the new warehouse on shore. Of course later the pier would become the dropping of point of the many treasures which would be combined to make the marvelous Hearst Castle.

Nature has erased most of the obvious indications there was a community on San Simeon Point. Sebastian’s General Store was pulled from the point to where it sits now; today there is little evidence that the villagers of so many different livelihoods and cultures lived and worked on the land of the Point and around the Bay but if you are out on the on “the Point” and take a silent moment, you can still feel spirits of these amazing pioneers and hear their ancient voices as they go about living on the old California Coast.