The village has had its famous residents since — a film star served two years as mayor in the late 1980s — but the identity was set by 1929 and has barely moved. A hundred years on, Carmel-by-the-Sea is still the storybook California coast: bohemian, salt-aired, dog-friendly, and impossibly pretty, with Carmel Beach curving in pale sand below Ocean Avenue and Point Lobos guarding the granite coast just south.
What do you do when your city falls down? If you were a San Francisco poet in April 1906, you followed George Sterling — the "uncrowned King of Bohemia" — south to a beach with no streets. This week's stories on our social archive follow that exodus: the ten-dollar lots that lured the artists, the 1963 ordinance that put high heels behind a permit, and the village that went a century without a single house number.
Why People Visit Carmel-by-the-Sea
- Relax on Carmel Beach, a broad crescent of pale sand backed by wind-flattened Monterey cypress and famous sunset silhouettes.
- Stretch farther south along Carmel River State Beach to where the Carmel River meets the Pacific — a quieter dog-friendly stretch with bird-watching at the lagoon.
- Explore Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, with granite coves, sea lions, otters, and easy trails above turquoise water.
- Find the Comstock storybook cottages — Hansel, Gretel, and the Tuck Box — on a self-guided fairytale walk through the village lanes.
- Tour the Carmel Mission Basilica (Mission San Carlos Borromeo), with its basilica, museum rooms, and gardens set within sandstone and adobe walls.
- Visit Tor House and Hawk Tower at Carmel Point, the hand-built stone home of poet Robinson Jeffers, open for docent-led tours.
- Browse Ocean Avenue's courtyards, galleries, and flower-lined passages, then walk Scenic Road along the cliffs above the surf.
