About Carmel, California (courtesy of Wikipedia)
Carmel-by-the-Sea, often abbreviated as "Carmel", is a small town endowed with a rich artistic history situated on the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey County, California. In 1906, the San Francisco Call devoted a full page to the "artists, poets and writers of Carmel-by-the-Sea" and in 1910 it reported that 60 percent of Carmel's houses were built by citizens who were "devoting their lives to work connected to the aesthetic arts." Early City Councils were dominated by artists and the town has had several mayors who were poets or actors including Herbert Heron, founder of the Forest Theater, and actor-director Clint Eastwood, who was mayor for one term, from 1986 to 1988. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 4,081.
Carmel-by-the-Sea is permeated by Native American, early Spanish and American history (Blanks, 1965). Most scholars believe that the Esselen tribe of Native Americans were the first people to inhabit the area of Carmel, but the Ohlone tribe pushed them south into the mountains of Big Sur around the 6th century. The first Europeans to see this land were Spanish mariners led by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542, who sailed up the California coast without landing. Another sixty years passed before another Spanish explorer and Carmelite Friar Sebastian Vizcaino "discovered" what is now known as Carmel Valley in 1602, which he named for his patron saint, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Spanish did not attempt to colonize the area until 1769, when Gaspar de Portola and Franciscan Father Juan Crespi visited the area in search of a mission site. They returned one year later in 1770 to found the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo at the southeastern edge of Carmel. The nearby colony of Monterey, established at the same time, soon became the capital of California until 1849. From the late 18th through the early 19th century, most of the Ohlone population died out from European diseases against which they had no immunity, and overwork and malnutrition at the missions where the Spanish forced them to live. In 1821, Carmel became Mexican territory when Mexico gained independence from Spain. A Scottish immigrant, John Martin, acquired lands surrounding the Carmel mission in 1833, which he named Mission Ranch. Carmel then became part of the United States in 1848, when Mexico ceded California as a result of the Mexican-American War.
In 1902 Frank Devendorf and Frank Powers, on behalf of the Carmel Development Company, filed the first subdivision map of the core village that became Carmel; that first village actually developed in 1904 and was incorporated in 1916. In 1910, the Carnegie Institution established the Coastal Laboratory, and a number of scientists moved to the area.
In 1905, in an effort to foster the arts, the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club was formed. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the village received an influx of artists and other creative types escaping the disaster area. Jack London describes the artists' colony in a portion of his novel, The Valley of the Moon; among the noted artists who thrived here were Mary Austin, Armin Hansen, George Sterling, Robinson Jeffers, Sinclair Lewis, Sydney Yard, Ferdinand Burgdorff, William Ritschel, William Keith and Percy Gray.
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