Pebble Beach, California

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Pebble Beach is a small private coastal unincorporated community in Monterey County, California. Technically, Pebble Beach is not a city at all, but a corporation, as it is owned by the Pebble Beach Company, although managed as a small town. Residents therefore pay homeowners' fees in lieu of city property taxes. The community's post office is named Pebble Beach, but the U.S. Census Bureau regards the land as part of the larger census-designated place of Del Monte Forest. The area is also partly administrated also by the Del Monte Forest Foundation, a non-profit organization designated by Monterey County and the California Coastal Commission, and comprising of a volunteer board of 12 persons interested in preserving the open space within the Del Monte Forest. Except for two representatives of the Pebble Beach Company, all must be property owners and residents of the Forest

Pebble Beach is famous for its golf. The town has seven public and private courses, including Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, Poppy Hills, and the eponymous Pebble Beach Golf Links. The AT&T Pro-Am (formerly known as the Bing Crosby "clambake") is held here every year at the end of January.

Another famous Pebble Beach attraction is the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance auto show. It focuses on classic cars, but manufacturers have lately begun introducing new luxury car models there.

Pebble Beach has few businesses owned by the Pebble Beach Company (except the golf courses, one gas station, and a deli) and no sidewalks. Most of the very expensive houses are hidden behind old-growth trees. It is quiet, secluded, and somewhat gloomy in foggy weather, which occurs quite frequently on the Peninsula in general, and in particular here where it meets the Pacific head-on.

The 17-Mile Drive is the main road through the Del Monte Forest.

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History

The Pebble Beach Company was originally created as the Del Monte Properties Company in 1919 by Samuel F. B. Morse, a distant relative of the telegraph inventor Samuel Morse. In the early 1900s, Morse was appointed manager for the Pacific Improvement Company, which had extensive real estate holdings on the Monterey Peninsula, and in 1919 he formed the Del Monte Properties Company and acquired those holdings, which included the Del Monte Forest and the popular Hotel Del Monte (now the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey).

In 1978, 20th Century Fox purchased the company and renamed it Pebble Beach Company. When the film company was sold to Rupert Murdoch in 1985, Fox's owner at the time, Marvin Davis, kept several company assets not directly related to the film and TV industry, including the Pebble Beach Company and the Aspen Skiing Company.

In 1990 Davis sold the Pebble Beach Company to the Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani, who made it a subsidiary of the Japanese resort company Taiheiyo Club Inc under a holding company called the Lone Cypress Company.

In 1999 the Pebble Beach Company was acquired from Lone Cypress by an investor group led by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer and Peter Ueberroth.

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