Half Moon Bay Memories & El Granada Observer

(Old buildings in Purisima–now gone.)

By June Morrall

(Written in 1977, using the resources at the San Mateo County History Museum)

By the age of 16, Henry Dobbel launched his ambitious climb to the top. That year, about 1845, he ran away from his home in Germany, to seek an adventurous life at sea.

The self-confident youth worked at odd jobs, willing to do anything, earning the respect of everyone around him. All the while, in the back of his mind, Henry knew a rich, full life lay ahead. Sailing around the Cape Horn, he landed in California months before the Gold Rush.

Again, in the Golden State, he performed all kinds of work, including hauling freight between the Amador minds and Sacramento. But soon Dobbel’s enterprising mind inspired him to switch occupations as he used an imported waffle iron to run a successful San Francisco restaurant.

He met and married fellow German Margaret Roverkampf-Schroeder. She arrived in California via the mosquito-infested trip across the Isthmus of Panama on muleback. The couple settled on a large farm in the East Bay.

In the 1860s Henry learned of the opportunities at the bustling new village of Purissima, sold his farm, and bought a thousand acres from John Purcell. The Dobbels became one of, or the largest landowners with dreams, perhaps, of being the biggest fish in a tiny pond.

Henry and Margaret built a big house on the south bank of the creek. Carpenters came from San Francisco and stayed for six months to construct the two-story, 17-room imposing building. There were all sorts of civilized conveniences, including running water in the rooms [established via a hydraulic "ram" placed in the creek to pump up the water.] Ever the inventor, Dobbel figured out how to install gas lighting in his new home.

The Dobbel’s created a true “Coastside mansion” with a ballroom covered with carpets imported from New York and Europe. Their dreams of grandeur extended to the gardens where colorful flowers and shrubs surrounded an elegant water fountain.

At all times two vicious mastiffs guarded the house and the valuables inside–as an additional precaution, the Dobbel’s personal police force patrolled the extensive grounds dotted with a smokehouse, gas house, barns and other outbuildings.

The Dobbel’s working ranch employed 50 men who planted and harvested wheat and barley, and potatoes, the mainstay of the area.

My impression is that the Dobbel’s wanted Purissima to be their personal fiefdom, which may not have been that unusual at the time. Consider the many grandiose mansions on the other side of the mountain. Without taxes to pay, it was possible to pursue a lifestyle that was diminished after 1913 when the Income Tax law went into effect.

The Dobbel’s employed schoolteacher Mary Bradley who lived with them. But the local children who attended school only in spring, summer and fall, failed to learn their lessons in winter, when the muddy roads prevented them from reaching the little schoolhouse.

A journalist passing through Purissima in 1871, noted impressive improvements, some financed by Henry Dobbel. The growing town consisted of a wagon, harness and shoemaker shop and Richard Dougherty’s well known Purissima House. Dougherty was the hotel’s host as well as the town’s postmaster where the stage stopped every day.

Half a dozen carpenters worked feverishly to finish the new general store, owned by the Husing brothers of San Mateo. Inside groceries, boots, liquor and cigars were sold. The sign outside read: “Come and see us. We mean business.”

A year later, Purissima was known as an up and coming town, prosperous and promising.

During a stage ride–apparently arranged for the purpose of snooping around Purissima–the visitors described the good-looking farms belonging to George Shoults, J. Campbell, and Silas H. Bowman, whose luscious fruit orchard receiving a special taste-test.

Near the mouth of Purissima Canyon, the snoopers took a tour of the locally famous Borden & Hatch mill, the exclusive suppliers of lumber to Half Moon Bay. There was no time to walk or ride horseback up to S.P. Pharis’ shingle mill, located in the same gulch.

Everybody called Henry Dobbel “the big farmer who paid taxes on $69,400.”

Spurred on by his many successes, Dobbel bought up more Coastside property, all of it near his mansion.One year he rented an 500 acres near the James Johnston house, now a landmark. All of the land was planted in one crop: potatoes.

As Purissima kept proving it could be a real town, businessmen in Half Moon Bay looked to invest in a good thing. A place called “Fairmont Park” was developed for “pleasure parties” in the canyon, not far from the Purissima House and five miles from Half Moon Bay via Higgin’s Road. All pleasure Parties required was dance floor, and swings and tables artfully placed beneath the redwoods.

To top it off, oil was discovered by the Purissima Petroleum Co. on George Shoults’ land in the 1880s–20 barrels a day. And then when, the same company drilled for coal oil at Dobbel’s place, “where a fine flow of oil was struck at 70 feet,” well, the excitement could hardly be contained. Everybody thought there would be an oil boom, along with the arrival of new residents, and construction began on a bigger schoolhouse.

But it was all a chimera, a fanciful dream.

In the middle of all the oil boom talk, Henry Husing, the San Mateo merchant who owned Purissima’s general store, sold out to Henry Dobbel. Dobbel, who knew a lot about many things, didn’t know how to run a business extended credit to anybody. Too much credit. Everything was going out and nothing was coming in. Then began the crop failures. The first year he could put it out of his mind, but the potatoes disappointed every year.

According to legend, Henry Dobbel acted against his nature when he mortgaged his property to the rival wealthy landowner Henry Cowell. At the foreclosure proceedings in 1890, the only bidder on the Dobbel estate was Henry Cowell–a man Coastsiders, when given the chance, loved to outsmart.

A year later Henry Dobbel was dead. Isn’t that the way this kind of a story often ends?

With Henry Dobbel gone, the fire and passion that was Purissima cooled off–meanwhile all the business headed for Spanishtown, now known as Half Moon Bay, and all talk of a town called Purissima faded away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Purisima, The Town That Could Have Been Half Moon Bay: Part I

By June Morrall

[I wrote this in 1977, using resources at the San Mateo County History Museum, Redwood City County Courthouse.]

As the first Americans reached “La Costa,” [the coast] in 1853, some purchased land, some lived a simple existence on rented soil–and still others, called “squatters,” ignored the formal rules of land ownership.

When a group of these squatters descended upon the Rancho Miramontes in Half Moon Bay on Sept. 24, 1853, they found Mr. Miramontes’ friends waiting to run them off the land. Unable to defend themselves in the face of strong opposition, the squatters drove off to drum up support.

And–soon, the Americans returned with reinforcements, boosting their number to 40 or 50. During the heated confrontation, the squatters, who caught the Spanish off guard, managed to seize even more land than before. [But, apparently, their victory was short-lived.]

Within a year, some of these Americans–sensing confusion over a narrow strip of disputed land, located between the Canada Verde and Purisima Creek, headed straight for the controversial territory. Merchants, who dreamed of developing a prosperous business district on the north side of Purisima Creek, followed behind.

And in this magnificent rural setting, four miles south of Half Moon Bay, the new village of Purisima rivalled Spanishtown.

Read the rest of this entry »

Coastside showplace in the 1870s–but not when this photo was taken.

To read John Vonderlin’s piece on Purissima Falls, click here

To read: “Purissima is a place from which even ghosts have departed,” click here

Purissima Cemetery

Info from Dutra Mortuary (Now called Dutra-Randleman), Half Moon Bay

“Four miles south of the town of Half Moon Bay lies the little, almost obscure, cemetery of Purissima. It is situated on a hill opposite a little country school-house. Although mostly covered by grass, it does not lose its charm. In fact it adds to it because it is typical of what it is–a pioneer cemetery.

“Up to the 1860s the deceased of Purissima had been buried in Half Moon Bay or other far away parts. But on September 15, 1868 John Purcell deeded a section of his territory to the residents of Purissima for a burial ground. He decided to deed it with three clauses added to the document. One was that the cemetery be kept in the hands of a Purissima Cemetery Association; that there be no fees charged, and that there be no changes. Number Two clause sets aside a section of land 150′ by 500′ in the North-East and for the erection of a Protestant Church. Number Three reserves land for a family plot.

“The first person buried there was a little boy named Downing. Unfortunately, this was tragic for he was not dead when buried, but only in a coma. A similar example of this coma occurred shortly after the boy was buried, when a man took sick and fell in a stupor. The Downing boy’s father, realizing the possibility of his son’s having been buried unconscious, opened the grave and found that his sound had turned over!

“Other early settlers of Purissima are buried here, too. These include the family names of Britt, Richer, Doble, Locke and the Denmarks.”

(Photo: L-R: The Locke Brothers, Josiah, David & Silas.)

Photos: At left, what Anna C. Waters might look like today, [see posts below for more info] and at right, Montara’s Mikie Benedict during a visit to the Greek islands.

I had no idea there was a dedicated group of web sleuthers out there helping to look for the missing. If you want to check out their work on the Anna C. Waters case, click here.

Apologies if I’m wrong, but I believe the head web sleuther in Half Moon Bay is Doug French.

…more coming….

I was looking into the Fine Arts Colony at Montara when I read in a 1900s issue of the “Coastside Comet” newspaper that a cottage called the Van Suppe Poet & Peasant Cottage was for rent. We’re talking about nearly 100 years ago. The man who took the ad out listed conditions: if you wanted to rent the Van Suppe Poet & Peasant Cottage in Montara you had to be an artist.

The contact person in the ad was Chauncey McGovern.

I knew who Chauncey was–I had come across the locally famous handwriting expert’s name while researching the unsolved murder of wealthy Sarah Coburn in the tiny village of Pescadero in 1919.

The 19th century Austrian composer Franz Von Suppe died in the late 1890s.

I discovered that the Von Suppe cottage still stood and pianist/free lance writer Mikie Benedict lived there. She had inherited the historical home from Howard Gilligan, a unique artist who made Montara his home.

Above: Harold Gilligan self-portrait, courtesy Mikie Benedict.

…to be continued…

(Photo: Montara’s Mikie Benedict visited Greece in the summer of 2006.)

After the exchange of a couple of emails, Mikie Benedict reminded me that I had written a piece about the historic cottage in Montara where the pianist still lives. That was in the 1990s. Mikie is the mother of Anna [please read post below]–Anna was five-years-old in 1973, the year she disappeared from her home just south of rural Half Moon Bay. She has never been heard from again.

If alive, today Anna would be 40-years-old. Mikie admits that every minute since Anna vanished, since that cruel day in 1973, every angle has been looked at– and looked at again and again.

“I still have no answers,” Mikie said.

What keeps you looking, I asked Mikie.

“…I’m sure many people think I’m crazy to go on looking for her after 34 and-a-half years. However, when a family friend timidly suggested trying some search tactics through the Internet (which of course was not available when Anna disappeared in 1973), I could hardly say, ‘No,’ as difficult as it was to drag out all that again.”

Mikie, an accomplished pianist, told me that while doing some general research, she was excited to learn that the Internet was responsible for six recent reunions in San Mateo County, with now grown-children seeking their birth parents. Why couldn’t it work for me? she wondered.

It’s an old case, and without leads it had gone cold, but now Mikie says the county has reopened it.

….to be continued…