Who Was Sam Morse

He is best known as the developer of Pebble Beach, but he had a dominant impact on the development of the rest of the Monterey Peninsula. It all started when he was appointed by the heirs of the Big Four (Crocker, Stanford, Huntington and Hopkins) to liquidate their holdings in 1915. This included the 440 room luxury resort Hotel Del Monte, the Del Monte Forest, the town of Pacific Grove, Carmel Woods, 11,000 acres in Carmel Valley and the Monterey Water Works. In 1919 he found the perfect buyer…himself.

He was a conservationist in the Teddy Roosevelt style, but he was also an artist, a boxer, a football star from Yale, a polo player, and a dreamer. He was not a golfer. He had a vast army of friends from President Eisenhower and Charlie Chaplin to Frank McComas and the nephew of Tiburcio Vasquez. He helped Flora Woods keep her Cannery Row saloon open and saved Marion Hollins from a paupers grave.

Someone once said that he could “out-imagine” anyone. He imagined a clutter free coastline, a Newport of the west, and that he could go the distance with Kid McCoy. He spent his life in Pebble Beach until the day he died in 1969.