Carmel, California

Its official name is Carmel-by-the-Sea. Father Junipero Serra established Mission San Carlos Borromeo on the north bank of the Rio Carmelo in 1770, and is buried here. Later writers and artists put Carmel on the map. Robert Louis Stevenson lived in nearby Monterey and often visited. At the turn of the century, poets came because of cheap land and great scenery. Carmel's greatest poet arrived in 1914; soon thereafter he built the famous tower named for him, Robinson Jeffers. By the1920s, vacation homes were popping up. The community soon began to be inhabited by the rich rather than the Bohemian. Clint Eastwood once mayor.

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Last updated: 3/30/98