A Rollicking Past

VIEW FROM THE WAYSIDE: This wayside is in a small offshoot off the main boardwalk. The offshoot is surrounded by 3 to 4 foot tall scrubby bushes. Directly overlooking the wayside, the flat, scrubby grassland can be seen in the distance. Behind where you are standing are two benches, both facing the flat grassland. Turning to face the benches, the vast expanse of the rolling hillside can be seen in the distance. The hillside is mostly bare, filled with grasses and scattered with a few trees. Depending on the time of year, the land can be filled with brightly colored wildflowers. In the dry, winter season, the landscape is typically filled with the greens and browns of the grasses and evergreens.

WAYSIDE LAYOUT: Rectangular wayside with three columns. The first column has text and 1 image. The second column has 2 images, oriented one above the other. The third column has 1 image with a quote below it
 

Column 1

TEXT: A Rollicking Past - Mori's Point Inn - In the late 1800's, Stefano Mori and his family arrived from Italy and farmed this land, grazing cattle and horses. They built a rambling 21-room farmhouse. This became Mori's Point Inn, a haven for travelers, bootleggers and diners. Mori's was an oasis on the long road between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay. During Prohibition in the 1920's, Stefano's son Jack turned the inn into a speakeasy, running Canadian whiskey from the smugglers' ships off the point. Federal agents arrested Jack Mori and confiscated thousands of cases of whiskey from his farm in 1923. Stefano's younger son, Ray, and his wife, Marie, rescued the roadhouse in 1932 and revived it as a restaurant, hotel and dancehall. It kept its' lively reputation until 1965, when Mori's Inn burned to the ground.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE #1: Located at the bottom of the first column on the left side of the wayside. Black and white editorial style cartoon. The image is of Mori Point, a cliff overlooking down the beach and water below. There are 5 men on the left side, only their heads peeking over a cliff down to the beach. One of the men appears to be a police officer and another is holding a flashlight, aimed towards the beach. On the beach, there is a man on a small boat, unloading boxes. He is handing the box to a man on the shore, who is loading it into the back of a moving truck. A man in the truck is wearing a dark hat and dark glasses.

CAPTION: "People...can recall an auto engine with attached winch which was permanently stationed on the beach and used to tow a skiff back and forth between the beach and anchored rumrunners' boats." - Bill Drake, Editor, Pacifica Tribune.

Column 2

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE #2: Located at the top of the second column. Black and white, rectangular photograph of Mori's Point in. The building is two stories and shown from the end. The end of the building has a porch wrapping around the corner, ending about halfway down the length of the building. Parked in front of the building are two older model cars.

CAPTION: Mori's Point Inn, 1952.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE #3: Located at the bottom of the second column. Black and white, rectangular photograph of Mori's Point Inn from the point, looking inland. The Inn sits atop a cliff on the right side of the image, overlooking the waves crashing below on the left. In the distance, there is a small pond with a river flowing from it, stretching down the image to where it meets the crashing waves at the beach. Trees can be seen scattered across the landscape in the background.

CAPTION: Mori's Point Inn, 1955. Looking eastward at Mori's Point Inn from the Point. A gap in the dunes permitted overflow from the Horse Stable pond to reach the ocean. Much of the beach has since eroded away.

Column 3

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE #4: Located in the third column, far right side of the wayside. Colored photograph, tall rectangular photograph of Mori Point as it looks today. The image is looking up the coast from Mori Point, in the foreground are bright yellow wildflowers in bloom surrounded by lush green grass. In the distance, the steep cliffs are overlooking the waves crashing below on the beach. The sky is mostly covered with gray clouds but the sunshine is beaming in from the right of the image, over the ocean.

QUOTE: "Before dinner we not only visited the garden where vegetables and herbs are raised for their use and chickens for the table, but we went for a hike over Mori's Point. We enjoyed the music of the dashing sea as it broke against the rocks where mussels are caught." - San Francisco News, 1937