Half Moon Bay Memories & El Granada Observer

Who lived in the El Granada Bathhouse during Prohibition?
Story & photos by June Morrall. Bathhouse photo courtesy Redwood City Main Library.

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I didn’t know anyone had actually lived in the El Granada Bathhouse–and used it as a home. When I arrived on the Coastside in the 1970s, the bathhouse was gone but I saw remnants of a road, big chunks of which had been and were still being torn apart by the highest of the high tides. If there had been a road there, then, clearly there had also been a lot of terra firma on the west side, the ocean side of the concrete, land once planted in rich fields of artichokes and Brussels sprouts. All gone now as Mother Nature shows us who rules.

The two-story “Bathhouse” was originally part of the Ocean Shore Railroad era, built in the early 1900s as a place for beach-goers to change into their bulky, old-fashioned swim-wear.

By now you know that the railroad’s “mandate” was to open up the isolated Coastside and provide the farming community with a new economy based on tourism. But Mother Nature, tough competition from the Southern Pacific on the other side of the hill, and a powerful love affair with the automobile took the Ocean Shore down.

Then the funniest thing happened: Alcohol, one of the popular drinks being whiskey was banned by the Prohibition Act, and, the dry law, like any law that says you can’t do something, encouraged the innovation of human nature to quench thirst. The natural response was to figure out a way to beat Prohibition. What the law breakers needed was a place to land the illegal booze, an isolated, secluded beach, recently abandoned by the railroad—and fearless men and boys to carry out the rest.

In the mid-1920s Gino Mearini and his family moved into the El Granada Bathhouse. Gino was just a kid, a teenager, smart as a whip, the son of Alesseio, who left his home in Tuscany seeking a better life in the US in 1914– at the beginning of WWI.

Alessio arrived without his wife and children; when he was doing better, he’d bring the family to live with him. The first job Alessio took was working in the dismal Pennsylvania coal mines before heading west to the Coastside where fellow Italians were farming artichokes and Brussels Sprouts.

(Photo: Gino Mearini stands in front of his bountiful orange tree.)

It was inevitable that Alessio would meet Dante Dianda, the big man in El Granada, the Coastside’s “Artichoke King.” Dianda, in partnership with John Patroni, who ran the Patroni House in Princeton-by-the-Sea owned two large ranches, encompassing Princeton, El Granada and Miramar. (Later, when Dante temporarily moved his family from El Granada to San Francisco, the farmer discovered that he enjoyed working at the busy San Francisco Produce Market much more than overseeing the two sprawling Coastside ranches.)

“Can you cook?” the Artichoke King asked Alessio Mearini.

“Yes!” was the younger man’s reply and Alessio was offered a job cooking for the men at the ranchhouse up the canyon in El Granada.

Alessio Mearini possessed a solid work ethic and business sense. Soon his cooking days were over and he was Dante’s partner, helping to manage the El Granada-Miramar ranch.

Earlier this week I was invited to Gino Mearini’s home in Cupertino. His lovely daughter, Janet Mearini Debenedetti was there, too–the owner of six cats, one of them most entertaining as she wrestled with Jo-Jo, Gino’s 10-year-old irresistible, recently shaved Pomeranian. Janet’s house stands across the street from her dad’s, and she said they bought the property on their street a long time ago, when the area was more rural. The climate reminded them of Italy, she explained.

We gathered at the kitchen table, a light-filled room (Burt sat across from me, with Gino at the head of the table, Janet at the opposite end. Janet grew up on the Coastsider, attending school with well known “Princetonians” Eugene Pardini and Ronnie Mangue.

I noted the small stack of books, all historical: Barbara Vanderwerf’s “Granada, A Synonym for Paradise;” Michael Orange’s “Half Moon Bay: Historic Coastside Reflections, ” and two of mine, “Half Moon Bay Memories: The Coastside’s Colorful Past,” and “Princeton-by-the-Sea.”

Gino wouldn’t like it if I revealed his age, but he has the spirit and curiosity of a young guy.

. (Photo: Gino Mearini looks at a page in Michael Orange’s book.)

Gino and his mom traveled from Italy to El Granada about 1921. At first they lived in a little house near where the El Granada Market stands today. A few years later the Mearinis moved into the vacant El Granada Bathhhouse.

The era belonged to Prohibition–and while the Bathhouse had become a home– when a light in the upstairs bedroom was flicked on past midnight, that was the “come on in, boys” signal–and the rumrunners boated in to El Granada Beach the bottles of whiskey unloaded from the Canadian mother ship anchored 12-mile out in the Pacific.

This was very, very serious business. Big money was involved. Thousands of cases of booze. The product had to be protected.

“There were bootleggers, armed with revolvers, looking for liquor hijackers at Miramar and El Granada,” Gino told me. But if it came down to a close chase with the Coast Guard, headquartered at Princeton, “We’d rather throw the load overboard than lose the boat. They had two Liberty motors, and they were fast engines.”

Gino, a teenager at the time, earned $25 for two hours of work, helping to drag the booze, that might have been tightly packed in gunny bags, across the sand dunes on homemade “sleds.” If John Patroni wasn’t around to pay Gino, “Otto and Anderson,” the Norwegians connected with the Canadian Mother ship, did.

What happened to the whiskey then? Gino said, “It was packed in straw, hidden in a nearby barn, and later picked up by some young guys driving a maroon colored Chrysler. There were velvet curtains covering the windows, maybe seven passengers could fit in there, boy, was it big.”

The drivers of the maroon Chrysler worked on contract, picking up at locations all over the county.

John Patroni was the “padrone,” the man who took care of the local Italians. He had nice cars, first a blue Packard, and then the fancy Cadillac. But who did John Patroni work for? I still can’t answer that question……

During our delightful conversation, Gino would correct things I had written. Clearly, while John Patroni had his own wharf at Princeton, where lots of whiskey was also landed, the El Granada Bathhouse may have played a much bigger role. In one of my books, I mentioned that booze was hidden beneath seawood mounted on a raft and pulled in. No, Gino said, “not possible.”

(Well, maybe it did happen but it sure sounds like nickel-and-dime stuff compared to the thousands and thousands of cases landed at El Granada.)

By 1933, the financial depression was hitting the Coastside hard, and because Prohibition was repealed, there was no more money to be made from illegal booze–but Gino had saved $600, all earned from working for the rumrunners.

The Mearini family moved out of the Bathhouse in February, 1932, and headed south of Half Moon Bay to isolated Lobitos where they rented John Meyn’s big white house. They later purchased land near where the trailer court is located on Airport Blvd., between Princeton and Moss Beach.

WWII on the Coastside is of particular interest to me, and Gino confirmed that all Italians without citizenship had to move from the beach side of the highway to the east side. (The Coastside Japanese had been interned.) In the town of Half Moon Bay, the center of Main Street was the dividing line. Gino had a lot of empathy for the “women and widows that had to move.” Unfortunately, most of the stores were on the west side of Main Street, causing much distress.

The Prohibition years were heady ones for the teenager, Gino Mearini, but one thing sticks out in his memory. At 6 a.m. in 1924, his mom called to him: “We’re going to get washed away.”

When Gino looked out the window he saw it coming towards him: a series of giant, hungry waves, an old-fashioned “Tidal Wave,”… a modern Tsunami. The family got out before the chicken house, packing shed and squealing pigs were swept away (the pigs survived.)

But when it was all over, the Bathhouse had been turned around a bit, and moved into the artichoke field. The beach around the house was gone. Years later as the sea chewed on more of the cliffs and sucked out the sand dunes, the waves finally claimed the Bathhouse as its own.

Occasionally, Gino Mearini visits the Coastside, and amusement crosses his face when he comes to the spot where the El Granada Bathhouse once stood. Actually, there is no such spot.

Over time the action of the waves has so altered the geography of what was here and what was there in the 1920s, that Gino can only smile and point, “The bathhouse, it’s out there, where the ocean is.”

KPIX’s “Eye on the Bay” program is doing a series on teeny tiny California towns, and when they got to “E,” the producers found El Granada, the jewel in the crown of the Ocean Shore Railroad’s Coastside. I was interviewed and had a great time, the best time I’ve ever had doing something like this.
This show features the DEF of the alphabet, so you’ll learn about Dublin before getting to El Granada. “F” stands for Felton, a nostalgic summer resort surrounded by giant redwoods.

To see the KPIX show, click here

To visit my pals at Coastsider.com, click here

(Photo: El Granada Author Gail Holland)

Dealing with any type of illness, physical or mental, has to be a difficult project for a writer–because there is no way that a good writer can avoid becoming emotionally involved in the subject he or she is researching and writing about.

The writer tries to play the observer, objective and untouched, but writers are much closer to actors than you may think. Like actors, writers absorb and breathe in the low and the high points of whatever they’re working on. And the “whatever,” seeps into the skin, the heart, and the mind.

El Granada author Gail Holland (gbauthor@hotmail.com) took on a very difficult subject in 1985 when she wrote: “For Sasha with Love: An Alzheimer’s Crusade,” the tragic story of the elegant San Franciscan Anne Bashkiroff, whose husband, Sasha, was suddenly crippled with incurable Alzheimers. Anne and Sasha, originally from Russia, had been very much in love.

In the 1980s when Gail wrote “For Sasha with Love,” finding help, resources, and any kind of support for victims of Alzheimers was nearly impossible. Institutions refused patients with the condition. It was a dead-end, a life sentence.

We can thank Anne Bashkiroff for founding the “Family Survival Project, ” now called “Family Caregiver Alliance,” which helped bring Alzheimers into public consciousness– and the insightful writer Gail Holland for telling us the whole story, sparing no details.

For today we know the parameters of this crippling disease– and the desperation of those who live with loved ones that have lost their faculties. In fact, Alzheimers victims frequently have lost their entire life’s history, as if the memory disk has been accidentally erased or wiped clean.

I’ve known Gail Holland for many, many years and I remember attending the “For Sasha, with Love” booksigning. I was proud to get both Gail’s and Anne’s autograph. Anne Bashkiroff was both beautiful and a woman with a presence.

Publication of the book attracted a lot of attention. The book was reprinted in 2007 by Purdue University Press with a new title: “Forget-Me-Not,” including updated information on caregiving.

When I met Gail, who has a charming English accent, she was working at the San Francisco Examiner, writing long feature articles. On one occasion she shared her bound collection of newspaper stories and I was envious of her talents. She was and remains a “hot” writer. Read the rest of this entry »

(The five siblings, left to right: Collin, Heidi, Kai, Sara and Jan, c 1995.)

THE RED HOUSE: Story by Kai Tiura

I heard that name given to the old family home, on one of Dante Dianda’s many properties in El Granada, last night and remembered that it was actually known as that by many locals. That memory gave birth to an entire train of thought revolving around, in short, simpler times.

The El Granada of my youth (1958 to 1966) was a throwback in many of the fondest senses of the term. The dirt streets, the empty lots - block after block of them, the endless opportunities for a kid to make an adventure out of what most adults saw as nothing. But more than that, it was a haven. A haven for individuality, for expression, for the creative to realize a tactile version of a beautiful thought.

El Granada, in much the same way as most of the San Mateo County coastal towns, was a place where artists and free-thinkers went to be allowed to put their thoughts into some kind of action, so many of them feeling stifled in more urban settings with their somewhat stuffy social atmospheres. Talking with June Morrall, one of Half Moon Bay’s biggest supporters, I have been reminded of the things that set El Granada apart from not only the more urban (i.e. soulless) cities and towns of the day, but from the way life was lived in that wonderful time in most bigger cities. Being somewhat secluded, the Coast (which the family has always said with a capital, like “The City” for San Francisco) was its own place for sure, but its own place in time as well.

So when June asked me to write something for her website, I was both honored and a bit intimidated. Then little memories started coming to me of the childhood I experienced there and the butterflies flew up and out and wove themselves into vivid mental images of the time I spent there in my younger years and how the world has changed so much from what it seemed to be then, and some other images, not so idyllic, of what is happening to the world around us today as we head uncertainly into tomorrow. It seemed, somehow, the right time for such a story.

Meandering around El Granada in the early sixties was very much like what one might believe a walk through Mayberry might be, only without paved roads or, in most cases, sidewalks; with a lot fewer people; with entire blocks which DID have sidewalks, but few homes on them; and most notably without the moral judgments of the townsfolk. OK, so maybe Mayberry wasn’t the best choice of simile, but the point is that Aunt Bea would have had a stroke if she’d run into me cruising the streets of El Granada. Living in The Red House (on Alhambra, next to the little post office of the time - currently the Creekside Smokehouse, and across the street from what was then Sam’s Market, now El Granada Market) I had the perfect central base of operations from which to conduct my missions of childhood. One such mission, when I was still wearing diapers (and somehow sneaked out a low window while older sisters Jan and Heidi babysat me) took me to The Ship’s Bell, just across the highway from our house, to visit my mom at work there. Being a free-spirited Coastsider, I saw nothing wrong with this journey, much to the chagrin of the passing Highway Patrolman who picked me up en-route. (Lawmen of the day were notoriously out of touch with the realities of the Coastal mindset ["I'm a ramblin' man, officer. Let's get this over with!"]. Then again, there was Ben Donahue, who terrorized all the older kids. When he once caught teenaged boys with beer and found our mom had sold it to them, he took them back to ID her and after sending them on their way, Ben spanked mom over his knee.)

When the flustered officer asked my name, I not only gave it to him, but offered also my address and phone number. When asked where I thought I might be going, I replied that I was, “…on my way to The Ship’s Bell to visit my mother”, who worked there. (I’m sure I was thinking the obligatory “Duh” quietly to myself). Seeing, obviously, that I was of rational thought, and not wanting to be outdone by a toddler, the kind officer applied some rational thought of his own and conveyed me forthwith to the aforementioned Ship’s Bell, where I was duly reunited with my mother, and one of many such family stories was born.

Good old mom, gone now for many years, was never much given to the “popular thought” process, certainly no Aunt Bea. An artist, who studied under her close friends Galen Wolf and Forest Young, she had the “Coastal” approach to thought. She loved to paint (and although was never the successful painter that Galen was, certain family members think her work trumped Forest’s, and her charcoal and pencil art was stunning) and dabbled in tile mosaics and driftwood sculpture; tempered the offbeat philosophies of Edgar Cayce with the analytical observations of Carl Jung… she was every bit a card-carrying Bohemian (sister Heidi reminds me that “they wouldn’t carry cards; they belonged by not belonging”) of the first order, and as such, she gave me a wonderfully freelance childhood. I rarely gave her back much more than headaches in those years (hell, well into my late thirties, really), but she was a woman on a mission who rarely let the easy path lure her from the rocky, slippery slope of the beliefs she held dear and so, as I grew up (numerous harrumphs and chuckles somewhere in the background…), I enjoyed the freedom to, say, join a newlywed (I’m assuming) couple that passed my house one morning on a walk through Princeton with their new baby, all the way out to Pillar Point and back. This somewhere near the age of five or six. I remember walking out to Surfer’s Beach for the day, listening to the Beach Boys coming from the hot rods and old jalopies parked there; rounding up seashells and driftwood oddities for mom; sitting in front of the post office during the morning rush, asking people we knew (and, I’m told, some we didn’t) if they’d like to stop by for a beer with my mother. Kids… she preferred wine, and not receiving visitors until she “put her face on”!

I was able, without interference from the overbearing typicality of the more unfortunate urbanite kids’ parents, to wrest dimes from the paper rack at the post office by shaking it until they fell on the ground (not sure how I figured that one out) and take them to Sam’s and buy large stockpiles of Black Cow candy bars. In fact, I was able to pull that off for quite a while. Oddly, it was only after I had taken to removing the coke bottles from the back storage area of Sam’s and turning them in to the front counter for the deposit that my spurious ways became suspect and my Black Cow days came to an abrupt end.

I was able, in those days before great concern as to the constant knowledge of the whereabouts of your kids, to wander down to Pop & Peggy’s (now - or last I knew - El Granada Liquors) and get candy whenever I had legitimate fundage (don’t try to look it up…). I could have bought them at Sam’s… I wasn’t forbidden back, just too embarrassed to go there. Yes, El Granada was a haven indeed.

(Kai and his wife, Kit, on their beloved Harley)

My sister Heidi had a donkey named Barney who lived, when he chose to, in a pen next to our garage. Barney had the wanderlust as well. Every time he could get loose, he went on walkabout. Most often, he beelined for Dykstra’s ranch where he’d lived before we bought him. Sometimes he was missing for a week or more. Heidi would hike the hills after school, carrying his bridle with the hopeless optimism she might find and catch him. Sometimes he would just end up incarcerated by family friends who would call the house and say “Heidi, Barney’s here. You wanna come get him?” And off she’d go, returning not long after, riding a disappointed Barney.

There were calls from others too. The Sea Horse Ranch, in those days widely respected for caring for fine race horses, would occasionally call, beside themselves with anger, and report that Barney had somehow penetrated (maybe not the best choice of words…) their defenses and saddled up, as it were, with one of the mares entrusted them by its hopeful owners, informing us that we had better retrieve him posthaste! Barney apparently had the nose of a bloodhound and the testosterone of an adolescent schoolboy, mixed with no fear of Highway 1 traffic and a single-mindedness second to none when it came to female companionship. And after he would get busted consorting with these extremely valuable animals, they were so kind as to call us instead of animal control or some other official entity, accept a heartfelt apology and a promise to have him snipped (which was promised but somehow never happened) and Heidi and Barney would be on their way. Small Town America… what a concept!

Mom and dad would occasionally hear from the sheriff about brother Collin driving his Henry J through town on its rear wheels. They hadn’t arrested him, probably couldn’t have caught him had they tried, but they knew he had the only car in town that would do wheelies and it was their civic duty to call our folks and let them know. Out of touch or not with the Coastal mindset, cops back then had a much better grasp on how to deal with kids.

Those days didn’t just create and exemplify what all our ideas of freedom were (they DID that); they gave us, our family and friends an understanding of what life can be. There were no worries that the neighbor would sue you if their kid fell off your rope swing. Neighbors knew one another, and cared for one another, and took responsibility for their own kids and lives and decisions and actions. If not always, most of the time certainly. That kind of upbringing gave us all tools with which, I like to believe, we were able to go into the world much better people than we might have been otherwise.

Knowing people like those who dwelled on the Coast in those days gave us insight and opened our minds to the possibilities out there, not satisfied to simply focus on the realities of what was visible, tangible. It makes me wonder, in today’s world, where we are headed if we do not remember these things, hold them dear, and force ourselves and our children to respect personal responsibility. There is no greater gift one can pass on to a child than the ability to make conscientious decisions of which they can be proud. God only knows it’s not always the easiest way to raise kids, giving them the freedom to make mistakes and then lovingly but firmly teaching them that the lesson is not in the fact that you made a bad decision, but in how you address that decision and administer the personal responsibility that it entails.

We have, as a society of “modern” and “advanced” people, lost sight of a lot of those valuable lessons taught us by simple and unassuming parents of yesterday. This little essay was not meant as, and will not be, a podium from which to pontificate or proselytize, for anyone who has watched me stumble through my adolescence knows I am in no position to do so. But it is the New Year, and as such, it is a perfect time for remembrances of this sort; reflections on what a wonderful world we have. Perhaps it’s time we spend more energy focusing on the positive instead of bemoaning the negative. Thinking back to what our parents taught us isn’t living in the past, it’s looking toward the future.

In that vein I would like to extend my best wishes to June and all her readers for a happy, healthy and productive New Year; one full of new ideas, and old, put to good use.

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Note: Kai is an artist who designs websites, click here –and has created gorgeous stained glass pieces like the one below featuring the lighthouse for a Montara client. I also love the butterfly motif.

I used the top photo for the cover of my 1978 book, “Half Moon Bay Memories: The Coastside’s Colorful Past.” It’s an advertisement for the automobile featured, a circa 1920 Mitchell. I had a very large copy of the photo produced for the San Benito House, where the classic picture still hangs today.

I’m not certain where, precisely, on the Coastside , the 1920 photo was shot, but in the late 1970s, on a lark, I tried to find a spot that looked like it–and that’s what you see in the bottom photo. The vehicle is a propane fueled Jeep that looked great but never worked properly.

The Bathhouse at El Granada beach

was built during the Ocean Shore Railroad era, in anticipation of serving beach-going visitors, but when the iron road failed, the Bathhouse became home for the Mearini family. This is the first I’d heard of anyone living in the Bathhouse–that no longer stands at El Granada Beach.
From the email I received today:

” Gino Mearini was a teenager, and helped to bring the whiskey ashore [during Prohibition] after it was unloaded from the boats that were anchored out in the bay. He and his family lived at the “Bath House” in El Granada. He can tell you about a high tide that caused waves to slam against the house, and wash away some of the out buildings and chicken coops into the artichoke fields, etc. etc…”

The El Granada Observer looks forward to visiting Mr. Mearini soon!

The “yard” at Granada may have served as a third Ocean Shore Railroad station. The other two were located at North Granada, where the much remodeled building still stands, and in central Granada, now a private residence, which was moved several hundred yards from its original location.

This is the bottom of page 142 where two photos of homes are displayed. Which one belonged to J. Mason Wiegel?

In 1979, after publication of “Half Moon Bay Memories: The Coastside’s Colorful Past,” I received this letter from J. Mason Wiegel. Mr. Wiegel, an attorney, was also the publisher and editor of the Weekly Law Digest, headquartered in San Francisco’s Mills Building on Montgomery Street.

He wrote:

“…I lived in the house in the canyon that you picture at the bottom of your page 142 [see above photo] for a number of years ending in 1920. My father had purchased the wooded hills back of El Granada form the subdividers a few years earlier. I graduated from Miramar Grammar School in 1920, where one teacher taught all eight grades. We moved to S.F. when the railroad service terminated, and he sold the property in 1921.”

My best wishes, Sincerely J. Mason Wiegel

Photos: at left, Dante Dianda, El Granada’s “Artichoke King” with unidentified woman and Alessio Mearini. Mearini was born in Arezzo, Italy and immigrated to the U.S. in 1914. He ws a partner and cook at Dianda’s ranch. Alessio Mearini stands next to Dianda in photo at right.

Ron Schmidt (RS): My Mother was Dante Dianda’s third child. I am curious about the photo of Dante with the other two people. It is not his son-in-law nor his son.
Where does the picture come from?

HMBM: Hi Ron,

I believe I got that photo from a Mr. Vellutini–I may have the spelling of his name wrong–I interviewed him in El Granada years ago. He is now gone. He said he had worked for Mr. Patroni at the Patroni House in Princeton during Prohibition.

Who do you think the people might be? I want to get it right. Please tell me something about yourself.

RS: I do not know who the two people are in the photo.

I know everyone who was around the farm and the men who worked there.

I know a great deal about Dante; he was influential in my philosophy of life and I have great respect for memories he has left me.

We have found just this year his relatives in Italy. We will be traveling to Italy next April.

If you have specific questions I would be happy to answer them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: After lunch on the beach, a look at available lots]

[Note: I wrote this story about El Granada in 1977.]

Snuggled against the mountains and facing a bay of incomparable beauty, the isolated hamlet [Granada] offered the best of two worlds: a desirable place to build a home and raise a family while fast commuter trains promised to deliver residents to their jobs in San Francisco.

A real estate agent from the Charles Kendrick Co. told his audience that the Ocean Shore Railroad planned to build a large casino, hotel and bathing pavillion overlooking the gray-blue Pacific.

“And any one you,” he said, “can buy a lot now, at low, low prices, and still enjoy the wonders of Granada while you watch your investment double.”

After listening to such a convincing sales pitch, followed by an unforgettable afternoon bag lunch on Granada’s sheltered, picturesque beach, people were ready to buy building lots.

And by the time these picnickers and lot speculators returned home on the train, they were bubbling with excitement. Before long as many as 1727 lots were sold, a total of $976,779. From that moment on, promoters stepped up publicity of the Coastside paradise on a grand scale.

…….to be continued………

what Atlantic City is to Philadelphia–what Coney Island is to New York–what Long Beach is to Los Angeles.”

[From 1900s advertisement, Chas. H. Kendrick Co., as it appeared in "The Last Whistle" by Jack Wagner--My story was written in 1977.]

AS the conductor announced the last call for Granada, a family of Sunday picnickers elbowed their way through the noisy crowd. After stepping off the train, the foursome followed other passengers walking toward the lovely new North Granada train station, with its graceful architectural touches– the arches– reminiscent of Stanford University’s Quad– finished off with a fine Spanish red tiled roof.

Many regular train-takers described the North Granada station as the most attractive on the entire Ocean Shore line–there were pretty ones in Moss Beach and Montara, too.

In the middle of the colorful scene at the train station, all heads looked up as a balloonist, suspended high above the ground, scattered a paper shower of pamphlets. One woman wearing a beribboned hat and full, long dress bent down to pick up the booklet which promised to reveal the bright future of Granada: the jewel of the coast.

Sales reps from Charles H. Kendrick Co., who identified themselves as the sole agents for Granada, attracted a swarm of interested home buyers. The men from Kendrick followed a script, warmly welcoming everyone to Granada–quickly advising that few had seen this spectacular part of the coast before. One real estate agent emphasized that the Ocean Shore Railway had chosen Granada as the centerpiece of an ambitious plan including a seaside resort, unlike any seen before.

…..to be continued…