Rum Row: The Big Sur Coves During Prohibition

Below the cliffs here, at Lucia and the coves between it and Anderson Creek, the water is calm enough some mornings that you can see the kelp moving in the swell. In the nineteen twenties, boats stood offshore in that same calm and waited for dark.

Prohibition ran from nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty-three. Highway One did not yet exist. The Big Sur coast had no road connecting it to Monterey and no deputy who could reach a cove in less than half a day on horseback. Boats from Canada and Mexico, the kind that carried dried abalone and kelp in legitimate trade, carried other cargo in the same holds during those years. At night they unloaded onto mule trains that climbed trails too steep for motorized vehicles. The cargo reached inland routes by morning.

Monterey County sheriff's records from the early nineteen twenties document multiple seizures in this stretch of coast. Local oral history collected by the Monterey County Historical Society names specific ranching families who participated, though those names remain in the archive rather than in print. The smuggling trade was practically indistinguishable from the legitimate coastal economy: same coves, same boats, same mule trails that had served the abalone drying operation and the tanbark trade for decades.

The specific seizure dates and quantities documented in those sheriff's records have not been published in accessible sources. The isolation that would later attract writers and seekers first attracted people who needed geography to stay out of their way. Big Sur has always been useful for that.