Franklin Riley and the Founding of Morro Bay

Morro Bay the town was the vision of one determined man, Franklin Riley. In eighteen seventy, Riley founded Morro Bay as a shipping port, a place to send out the dairy products, grain, wool, and other products of the cattle and dairy ranchos that filled the surrounding hills. Under Mexican rule those ranchos, including Rancho San Bernardo, had produced far more than the region could use, and they badly needed a way to move goods to market by sea.

Riley found land that bordered Rancho San Bernardo but was still open for homesteading. He laid out a town, and he secured his claim to the land. To make his port work, he built a wharf on the bay, the ancestor of today's Embarcadero, so schooners could load ranch products and unload the dry goods the ranchers needed.

For years Morro Bay was a modest but busy little export port, its fortunes rising and falling with the difficulty of keeping a safe harbor open against the sand and surf. From that practical beginning, a shipping point for dairy and ranch goods, grew the seaside town you see today.