Pico Blanco is a peak on the coast of Big Sur in the Santa Lucia Range of the Los Padres National Forest. The Little Sur River and its tributaries almost surround the mountain. The North Fork wraps around the northern flank and eastern edge of the mountain, and the South Fork crosses the mountain to the west and south-west. The mountain is known for an extremely high-grade limestone deposit. The peak and surrounding , are owned by the Granite Rock Company of Watsonville, California. The lower western slopes of the mountain are the property of the El Sur Ranch. The Old Coast Road built in the early 1900s cuts across its western flank. The view from its summit allows hikers to see Ventana Double Cone and Kandlbinder Peak to the southeast, as well as a host of other Big Sur peaks: Mt. Manuel, Post Summit, Uncle Sam Mtn., and Cone Peak far to the south. The mountain is central to the creation story of the Esselen people.
Toponymy
Pico Blanco means 'white peak' in the Spanish language. A large, white limestone outcropping on the mountain peak is clearly visible from all directions.
History
Esselen people
The peak was considered a sacred mountain by the Esselen people from which all life originated. According to their creation story, the world was destroyed in a great flood, and when the waters rose, the summit of Pico Blanco was the only land to remain exposed. According to one version of the legend, an eagle, coyote, and hummingbird, or—based on another, an eagle, crow, raven, hawk, and hummingbird—survived the flood. A magical feather was plucked from the eagle and planted in the ocean to cause the waters to recede, recreating the world.
European visit
The mountain was seen by J. Smeaton Chase, who traveled on horseback up the coast in 1911, who reported:
Survey use
The summit of the mountain was the location of a triangulation station built by a survey crew from the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, a predecessor agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They were charged beginning in about 1931 with modernizing nautical charts of the California Central Coast, which was prone to ship wrecks. The peak was a six and a half hour climb from the coast. The observation teams would often have to wait hours for the fog to lift before they could make their observations.
Alfred Clark's discovery
Alfred King Clark was born in Middlesex, England, on February 21, 1848. He was baptized at 13 months in the Parish of Old St. Pancras. His father George Robert Clark was a stonemason from Tunstall, Staffordshire, England. The family lived on Albion Street in the London neighborhood of Tyburnia, near Hyde Park. In April 1861, his mother Hannah and Al boarded the Adelaide in Liverpool and departed for New York City.
Three weeks after President Abraham Lincoln delivered his address at Gettysburg, Al Clark enlisted in the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry on December 11, 1863 at age 15. In April 1869, his mother Hannah married John Bowery in Pajaro, California. In 1870 Clark was a farmworker and on September 5, 1871, he became a naturalized American citizen in Castroville, California, where he was working as a carpenter. Big Sur pioneer W.B. Post owned a butcher shop in town. He was first recorded on the Monterey County voter registration roles in 1877 at age 22. On July 12, 1873, Clark married Sarah A. Curtis. No further record of the marriage is available, and they apparently divorced by 1875, when Clark was recorded as a farmer in San Luis Obispo. Clark was farmer and a carpenter in Castroville, Soledad, and Salinas. He occasionally worked as a laborer on road-building crews.
Clark helped Isaac Newton Swetnam build his home at the mouth of Palo Colorado Canyon. Clark built his own homestead on the south fork of the Little Sur River around the turn of the century. He filed a land patent for on June 30, 1906.
A local legend reports that local Native Americans would, at the behest of the Spanish soldiers, travel into the wilderness near the Little Sur River and return with burros laden with high-quality silver ore. The Indians insisted on traveling alone and the Spanish never learned of the silver's location.