Pillar Point Bluff is a in San Mateo County, California. It is part of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, owned by the U.S. state of California, and managed by San Mateo County as a county park and nature preserve. The park is located between Princeton-by-the-Sea and Moss Beach, just north of the Pillar Point peninsula, Pillar Point Harbor, and Half Moon Bay. The area was inhabited by coastal indigenous peoples for thousands of years, and in recent centuries, was used for livestock grazing by Spanish Missions and Mexican ranchos. Pillar Point Bluff was once part of the Rancho Corral de Tierra Mexican land grant before California became a state.
Peninsula Open Space Trust first purchased the land in large parcels from 2004 to 2008 to protect it from development, selling it to the county for use as a park in 2011. Additional parcels were added in 2015. The land is now part of the California Coastal Trail, a network of public trails along the entire coast of California. The park offers trails for hiking, jogging, horseback riding, cycling and on-leash dog walking.
The trails wind through a coastal scrub and coastal terrace prairie habitat, with scenic views of wetlands, farmlands, Montara Mountain, Half Moon Bay, the Pacific Ocean, Mavericks surf break, and native wildlife, including seasonal views of wildflowers and gray and humpback whales. The area is also home to the threatened California red-legged frog and the endangered San Francisco garter snake. The Jean Lauer Trail, a dirt-packed hiking trail, is ADA accessible.
Geography Pillar Point Bluff is a San Mateo County park located between Moss Beach and Princeton-by-the-Sea, approximately south of San Francisco and north of Santa Cruz. The parkDavidson 2023. is located in the westernmost area of Moss Beach, extending along the bluff top with cliffs that drop down to the Pacific Ocean in the west.Duwe & Nowak 2008, p. 15. Its boundaries lie from Bernal Avenue in the north to the community of Princeton-by-the-Sea in the south, bounded by the Pillar Ridge private community and Airport Street in the east.Weigel 2016.
The park is part of the greater Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, which in turn is part of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The reserve is jointly managed by San Mateo County Parks and Recreation and the California Department of Fish and Game. It contains both the intertidal marine habitats below Pillar Point Bluff and the coastal bluffs themselves. The reserve is approximately 402 acres in total size, encompassing three miles in distance from Point Montara to Pillar Point, while also stretching 1,000 feet into the Pacific Ocean.Postel et al. 2010b, pp. 185-186. Ross' Cove, the beach directly below Pillar Point Bluff, is a part of the Montara State Marine Reserve, while the Pillar Point State Marine Conservation Area overlaps and encompasses the area towards the end of the peninsula.Ochavillo 2021.
The large, white radome of the Pillar Point Air Force Station can be seen in the southernmost part of the peninsula overlooking the promontory, with views of Half Moon Bay and Pillar Point Harbor to the south.Mullally & Mullally 2017, pp. 122–125. Towards the east, views of the Half Moon Bay Airport,Murtagh 2011. farmlands, Rancho Corral de Tierra (a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area), and Montara Mountain can be seen from the bluff trails. To the west, one can see the Pacific Ocean and Mavericks surf break.
Geology The San Gregorio Fault, an active, coastal fault, is located mostly offshore of Northern California. In that area, it comes onshore in only two points, between Año Nuevo Point and San Gregorio, and between Pillar Point and Moss Beach.Simpson et al. 1997. The northern, on-land portion of the fault at Pillar Point forms a , east-facing escarpment to the east of Pillar Point Bluff. The fault cuts across land along the southern side of Pillar Point Bluff towards the northern end, and to the west of the San Andreas Fault. This portion of the San Gregorio Fault is classified as an active, late Holocene, strike-slip fault, and was believed to be active sometime after 1270 CE but before 1775 CE. Before the park was created, Pillar Point Bluff was referred to as Seal Cove Bluffs, and the onshore portion of the San Gregorio Fault in this area was sometimes referred to as the Seal Cove Fault in the geological literature. The sedimentary rocks in the bluff are classified as part of the Purisima Formation, from the late Miocene or early Pliocene.Pampeyan 1994, pp. 6–7. Malacologists identified marine invertebrate fossils from the Seal Cove and Pillar Point Bluff area consisting predominantly of species of butter clam (Saxidomus gigantea) and the Pacific littleneck clam (Leukoma staminea).Kennedy 1981, p. 11-12.
History Evidence suggests that the from Moss Beach to Pillar Point was likely inhabited sometime around 6,000–7,000 years ago, with coastal indigenous peoples gathering seafood from the offshore reefs, while also hunting rabbits, deer, and hauled-out harbor seals from the surrounding land.Svanevik & Burgett 2001, p. 47. In the pre-Columbian era, the Chiguan Ohlones inhabited the area, living in two major villages near the coast, Ssatumnumo, which is now present-day Princeton-by-the-Sea, and Chagunte, which is thought to have been near or around Pillar Point.Department of Parks and Recreation 2018, p. 8; Gerber et al. 2009, p. 5.9.
On October 30, 1769, the Portolá expedition described Pillar Point as it camped near Martini Creek at the bottom of Montara Mountain. Franciscan padre Juan Crespí, the official diarist, wrote: "The coast and mainland at about a league from this stream form a very long point of land reaching far out to sea, and a great deal of flats running along its tip, with many large rocks seeming from afar to be island rocks."Neely 2019, p. 379. Crespí named the point "punta del Ángel Custodio", or "Guardian Angel Point".Department of Parks and Recreation 2018, p. 4. The expedition continued north, making the first recorded European sighting of San Francisco Bay just a few days later, on November 1.Alexander & Hamm 1916, p. 15.
Spain eventually colonized the area, establishing Mission San Francisco de Asís in 1776, just five days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. By the early 1790s, the Mission was using the area near Pillar Point for horse and cattle grazing, where it was described as El Pilar or Los Pilares, based on the rocky formation near the promontory.Hoover et al 2002. p. 394. These types of natural enclosures for livestock at Pillar Point were referred to as "El Corral de Tierra" (the Earth Corral).Gudde 1998, p. 92. The land became part of Mexico after they achieved their independence in 1821. The Mexican secularization act of 1833 granted the land, then known as Rancho Corral de Tierra, in two parcels. The Mexican–American War took place from 1846 to 1848, leading to Mexico ceding the area to the United States, making it part of the thirty-first state of California in 1850.TetraTech 2012, p. 3-8.
By the mid-19th century, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores ran a shore whaling station at Pillar Point, using the bluff to spot whales and then launch boats to capture them. On average, a single shore whaling station in California would harvest 180 whales per year. The station hauled the whale carcasses onto the reefs at Pillar Point, where they would strip the blubber to extract the oil. This continued for approximately 40 years, declining as petroleum oil slowly replaced it.Postel et al. 2010b, pp. 145–155. By the 1890s, commercial agriculture began to emerge as a viable industry, with artichokes being grown south of the bluffs in El Grenada. In the early 20th century, a dairy farm operated at the base of the bluffs.Davidson & Duwe 2011, p. 5. In the 1920s and 1930s, the beach and cliff area just north of the bluffs was used by rum-runners to ship and distribute illegal whiskey during the Prohibition era.Postel et al. 2010b, pp.139–140, 168. Ranching continued up until World War II, when the southernmost part of the peninsula was converted into the Pillar Point Military Reservation to protect the coast from the potential threat of attack from Japan.Gerber et al. 2009, p. 2.3, 5.10, 6.1–2. To the south of the bluffs, the basic infrastructure of Pillar Point Harbor was completed in the 1960s.Postel et al. 2010a, p. 5
Preservation efforts The coastal area to the north, around Seal Cove, faced major threats and environmental destruction from human encroachment until it was protected in November 1969 as the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.Svanevik & Burgett 2001, pp. 47–51. In 1972, the United States Congress passed the Coastal Zone Management Act to encourage coastal states to develop and implement coastal zone management plans. The California Coastal Act of 1976 (Ca. Pub. Res. Code § 30000) permanently created the California Coastal Commission, an independent state agency tasked with coastal zone management.National Park Service 2011, pp. 70–71. The Coastal Act requires that local coastal programs for each county implement its requirements, particularly the policies in Chapter 3 stipulating public access and recreation.County of San Mateo 2022. San Mateo County Parks began to develop a long-term plan for connecting trails along the coast.
The California State Legislature passed Senate Bill 908 in 2001, authorizing the Coastal Conservancy to complete a report on a proposal to build a network of state-wide, public trails along the entire coast of California, to both increase public access to the coastline and educate visitors about the environmental resources of the state. Concurrently, the Fitzgerald Marine Master Plan was completed in 2002. The reserve, which is part of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, includes of upland coastal bluffs in their master plan.National Park Service 2011, p. 118, 120–121.
Soon after, the Coastal Conservancy published Completing the California Coastal Trail in 2003. The report makes the case for restoring and protecting the coastal lands of California and creating a network of public trails open to everyone, "a continuous public right-of-way along the California coastline designed to foster appreciation and stewardship of the scenic and natural resources of the coast through hiking and other complementary modes of non-motorized transportation." The report specified certain conditions, highlighting the need for a new trail in an area of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve facing the land, leading the Coastal Conservancy to eventually grant funds to Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), a private nonprofit with a mandate to protect and preserve natural areas of the state from development, to begin planning new trails and infrastructure for a proposed park at Pillar Point Bluff.California Coastal Commission 2015, p. 8.
Park establishment Before becoming a park, Pillar Point Bluff faced pressure by commercial developers for decades, beginning in the later part of the 20th century.Weigel 2015. Although multiple sections of the bluff remained in private hands during this time and were owned by different parties, the land was still used by the public for recreation, with people creating trails over the years through repeated wear and tear on the grassy bluff.Noack 2008. Investors and absentee landowners proposed building golf courses, new houses, bed-and-breakfasts, hotels, and even a business park, but none were approved.Half Moon Bay Review 2011; Weigel 2015.