Читать книгу Hiking & Backpacking Big Sur. Your complete guide to the trails of Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness, and Silver Peak Wilderness онлайн

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Pioneers and prospectors headed to California in droves. By this time, many outlying areas, including the Carmel, Nacimiento, and San Antonio River Valleys, were already privately owned. Two land grants spanned Big Sur: the 8984-acre Rancho El Sur, owned by Juan Bautista Alvarado, covering most of Point Sur, and the 8876-acre Rancho San Jose y Sur Chiquito, from the Carmel River to Palo Colorado Canyon.

Would-be homesteaders found the remaining steep, rocky terrain ill suited for farming, difficult to cross, and isolated from the world. Nonetheless, by the late 1800s a small community of determined pioneers had settled in Big Sur. These strong-willed folks survived by hunting, fishing, foraging, raising livestock, planting orchards, and tending gardens amid the lush canyons and steep ridges. Today, much of the land is named for these early pioneer families, including the Pfeiffers, Posts, Plasketts, Prewitts, and Partingtons.

The sheer coastal topography has kept the Big Sur coastline rugged and largely uninhabited even to the present day.