The Bid Sur Saved

"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.

What specifically aroused the Big Sureans to action was the decision of the State Division of Highways to widen the winding two-lane road through the region, California 1. referred to by Monterey County boosters as "Wonderful One." One of the highwaymen's proposals especially horrified the esthetes; to replace wooden bridges between the canyons with fill. "Beauty is almost a bad word with some highway engineers." says Owings. "They're very competent. But you would not ask your butcher to perform plastic surgery on your best girl."

Owings put some of his firm's experts to work and prepared a report showing that it would be far cheaper to replace wooden bridges with concrete bridges as well as more beautiful. Then the Big Sureans applied themselves to an overall plan. "What we don't save in the next five or ten years will be gone for all time," warned Nicholas Roosevelt.

Architect Owings worked out a master plan for zoning the whole Big Sur area. A few of the older settlers resented any attempt by the "intellectual interlopers" to deny them the right to sell their land as they choose. But on one point all agreed -- nobody wanted the Federal Government taking over Big Sur as a national park, with all the rules, regulations and outside direction that implied.

The master planners agreed that if Big Sur's natural beauty were strewn with modern structures, neither tourists nor residents would have what they came for. Therefore they proposed:

> The drafting of zoning laws to limit the number of new houses and encourage their clustering -- for example, ten houses with 100 acres of land among them might be clustered on ten acres, leaving the remaining 90 acres clear.

> Acceptance of the principle that the view from the road is paramount, and new houses should be sited so that their roofs would not break the skyline.

> Limiting the coastal highway to its present two-lane width, with a 100 ft. setback along its whole length.

> The controlled expansion of tourist facilities, with the development of beaches and the building of at least two new harbors.

After over a year of hearings, discussions, arguments, counterarguments and compromises, the overwhelming majority of Big Sur inhabitants accepted the Owings plan, agreeing with the general principle that the preservation of the nat ural beauty of their wild land was more important than any short-term profit they might realize by selling their land to free wheeling developers intent on filling the area with motels and housing developments. All this was more acceptable in Big Sur than it might be elsewhere. Despite the drenching seasonal rains, there are few year-round springs on Big Sur's rocky slopes, and frequently hundreds of acres have to be bought to ensure the water supply for a single dwelling. This has the added advantage of making springless land almost unsalable.

More important, the county supervisors were convinced. Last month they voted, with only one dissent, to adopt the prin ciples of the Owings plan as a blueprint for Big Sur's future. Zoning ordinances will be issued area by area, as the occasion arises; but the Owings plan is firmly established as the basic guideline. Crowed Roosevelt: ''Big Sur is saved."

"It's a great step in the democratic process," says Owings. "It gave me confidence in what can be expected at a modest county level of political sophistication, without state or federal intervention."

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