Designs On Devil's Slide: A Short History

California’s Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is working to finish two tunnels that will bypass the current Highway 1 route between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay.   The tunnels beneath San Pedro Mountain are expected to open in early 2012.  Between this multi-million dollar construction scheme and the sea is the old route along the stretch of coastline hills called Devil’s Slide. 

After driving up the steep incline from Pacifica, you wind around a bend that passes alongside the tunnel project and then, before the parking lot at the foot of Montara Mountain, there’s an unusual building off to the right, jutting out over the cliff.  This brick and metal structure, the size of a house, sits high on the slope overlooking the sea like an ugly, steel head.

As many Coastside residents know, this is the remains of an observation post that formed one of the radar installations designed to protect San Francisco from attack during World War II.  Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County History Museum, elaborates: “It was one of the buildings that formed part of the radar facilities that all hooked to guns north of there, like the 16 inch guns at Fort Funston.”

According to the Wikipedia entry, before the days of radar, it formed one of six installations on Devil’s Slide, positioned to allow them to use a process called triangulation to pinpoint enemy ships. “There were six military structures at the Devil's Slide: three concrete and steel observation pill-boxes, two concrete and earth bunkers, and a reinforced steel observation tower,” the entry reads.

This unusual feature on the landscape is described by Dave Cresson in his book Half Moon Bay’s Turning Points as a “great concrete pimple.” It owes its current exposed state to an unusual episode in its recent history.  Cresson writes that in the late 1960s the land had passed into private hands. The owner, thought to be from Texas, petitioned San Mateo County officials for permission to build a mansion overlooking the sea.  The local planning inspectors refused to grant the permits necessary for sewage disposal and, according to Cresson, the frustrated Texan took his frustration out on the hillside, bulldozing away at the top of the hill, leaving the metal structure exposed for all to see – the “concrete pimple” that it is today.  

At about the same time, a developer from San Francisco’s Sunset District was hoping to implement a much bigger scheme on the Montara Mountain section of Devil’s Slide.  According to Eric Rice writing in the Half Moon Bay Review, Henry Doelger hoped to build a city of 60,000 people on the thousands of acres that form the southern face of Montara Mountain.  Opposition from local citizens delayed the plan and in 1969 Doelger sold his land to another developer.

A couple of decades later, a Swede hatched designs of his own for Devil’s Slide.  In 1983, according to records at the San Mateo County History Museum, Alfred J. Wiebe, a Montara resident originally from Stockholm proposed a commercial project for the Devil’s Slide Military Recreation Area.  He’d purchased part of Devil’s Slide about twenty years earlier when nearly a thousand acres of it was sold off as war surplus.

Wiebe wanted to construct apartments, a restaurant, a spa, a castle with a radio studio and a multi-million dollar harbor for yachts – and rename the area "Monaco West."  According to news reports, he said the idea of acquiring the land came from Charlotte Magnette, a resident of El Granada who claimed to be a Belgian princess.  She thought the area was ripe for a development that would convert it into northern California’s answer to the French Riviera. The project never came to fruition.

Pacifica Television Host Ian Butler has also written about Alfred Wiebe, referring to Barbara Vanderwerf’s book Montara Mountain.

If Caltrans finishes the tunnel project according to their 2012 deadline, the bypassed section of Highway 1 on Devil’s Slide will be open to the public for recreational use as a hiking and biking trail, where visitors will be able to stop and contemplate the personalities that have contributed to Devil’s Slide’s history.

Thanks to Ian Butler, Dave Cresson, Mitch Postel and Eric Rice