Announcements and Links to Interviews and Appearances
On Monday, April 16, 2012, Pebble Beach Company Historian Neal Hotelling will give a presentation to the Carmel Women's Club on "Samuel F.B. Morse: The Man Who Built Pebble Beach and Re-shaped the Monterey Peninsula." The exposition will include slides as well as the screening of a rarely shown film tribute to Mr. Morse that Hotelling wrote, edited and narrated in 1999. Morse (1885-1969) was raised in the east and came to California shortly after graduating from Harvard in 1908. After proving his skills in the Central Valley developing holdings of John Hays Hammond near Delano and the Crocker-Huffman Land and Water Company near Merced, Morse, in 1915, was put in charge of the vast holdings of the Pacific Improvement Company that included the Del Monte Unit with nearly 18,000 acres in Carmel Valley and on the Monterey Peninsula. He convinced the company to abandon earlier plans and in 1919 opened The Lodge and Pebble Beach Golf Links and formed Del Monte Properties Company to purchase the holding himself. Over the next 50 years, his efforts led to multiple golf courses, the Beach tract at Pacific Grove, Fisherman's Flats and Garden Road in Monterey, Carmel Woods, the San Clemente Dam, the Monterey Airport, the Community Hospital, Laguna Seca Raceway, and Del Monte Shopping Center—just to name a few areas in addition to Pebble Beach.
See Neal interviewed on the LiveNetworks Author Series with host Michael Hemp