Big Sur

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
McWay Rocks and McWay Cove Beach
Bixby Bridge on Highway 1
The Pacific coast near Carmel , California
Big Sur coast at dusk

Big Sur is a stretch of coast in the US state of California between San Simeon in the south and Carmel in the north. It encompasses around 100 kilometers of coastline and the mountains of the Santa Lucia Range towering behind it . Since it is not an official administrative unit , the boundaries are not used in a completely uniform manner.

Overview

The name Big Sur is made up of the English word big ("large") and the Spanish word sur ("south"), meaning "great south" and comes from the time when the region was still the Spanish colony of Alta California . The area south of the then capital Monterey was called el país grande del sur (the great country of the south), or el sur grande for short . In Spanish times and under Mexican administration, the area was almost undeveloped, El Camino Real - the royal road - ran between Monterey and San Luis Obispo off the coast in the valley of the Salinas River .

The rugged rocky coast, the high mountains - at 1,571 meters, Cone Peak is the highest peak in the chain of coastal mountains in all of California - and the low settlement density convey the impression of unspoiled nature, which attracts tourists and motivated many celebrities, especially actors, to come to the Area to settle. The Big Sur section is the classic part of California's No. 1 with the Bixby Bridge . The road was built as part of the New Deal during the Great Depression and was completed in 1937. She opened up the area for the first time. The county government issued zoning ordinances back in the 1960s, which prohibit the erection of buildings that are visible from the street. This reinforces the impression of being untouched.

Forest fires and landslides, some of which last for weeks, repeatedly require evacuations and force the closure of individual sections of Highway No. 1.

Flora and fauna

In addition to the fascinating landscape, Big Sur also offers a varied fauna such as the Californian sea lions , sea ​​otters or the gray whales , which attract tourists from all over the world. The mountains are mostly forested and belong to the Los Padres National Forest , a national forest . In them lies the Ventana Wilderness , a nature reserve of the type of a Wilderness Area , the strictest class of protected areas in the United States. In the National Forest are 1997 California condors reintroduced. The species was extinct in the wild in the 1980s and is the subject of the largest conservation breeding program in the United States. The small population of Big Sur has had contact with the animals that are being released into the Pinnacles National Park 50 kilometers to the east since around 2006 . The Ventana Wilderness also featured the program's first successful brood of wild California condors.

On the Big Sur coast there is a chain of California state parks , mostly on bays with sandy beaches, such as Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park or Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park . To the north near Carmel is Point Lobos State Reserve , a rugged stretch of coast famous for its sea otters.

Settlement and sights

Because Big Sur is not an official area name, population data can only be derived from the ZIP Code Tabulation Area . According to this, only 996 people lived in the Big Sur area in 2000; by 2010 the population grew to 1369. The Esalen Institute has been located in Big Sur since the 1960s . At the southern end of the Big Sur area near San Simeon is Hearst Castle , the luxurious and eccentric estate of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst .

Big Sur in the movie

The area has been widely used as a location for cinema and television films. The best known are: " Homesickness ", the first Lassie film from 1943, " ... Who Desire Everything " with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and " Basic Instinct " with Sharon Stone .

Personalities of the place

  • Bill Frisell (* 1951), guitarist, resided at the Glen Deven Ranch in Big Sur in April and September 2012, where he composed the music for his album of the same name.
  • Peter Ind (* 1928), jazz musician, lived in Big Sur between 1963 and 1965.
  • Alan Jardine (* 1942), musician from "The Beach Boys" has lived on a farm in Big Sur since the 1970s.
  • Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962), poet, playwright and natural philosopher, wrote numerous poems about the region.
  • Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), writer, spent the summer of 1960 in Big Sur. He then wrote his novel of the same name .
  • Henry Miller (1891–1980), writer and painter, lived in Big Sur from 1944 to 1962. In 1957 Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch was published , an autobiographical essay about his stay there as a dropout from civilization.
  • Michael Murphy (* 1930), co-founder of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur
  • Linus Carl Pauling (1901–1994), Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Peace Prize, lived here on his farm and died there at the age of 93.

Documentary film

  • Big Sur - The wild coast of California (Original title: The Living Edens. Big Sur - California's Wild Coast ). Documentation by Bruce Reitherman , USA 2001, 45 minutes.

literature

Web links

Commons : Big Sur  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ census.gov: American Fact Finder ZCTS 93920

Coordinates: 36 ° 15 '27.2 "  N , 121 ° 49' 28.7"  W.