In 1929 they wrote the choice down. City attorney Argyll Campbell drafted Ordinance No. 96 and the council adopted it as something close to a constitution: Carmel was declared "primarily, essentially and predominantly a residential city," where business and commerce were subordinated to its residential character. Locals call it Carmel's Magna Carta. It is still the law, and it hangs behind the council's seats. Everything that visitors find odd about the village follows from that one sentence. The Monterey pines and cypresses are planted irregularly on purpose, so the streets read as woods; the city keeps a forester and manages more than thirteen thousand public trees, and removing one on your own lot takes a permit. Roots buckle pavement, so the pavement stays informal — no sidewalks outside the small downtown, no parking meters, no streetlights. And in 1963, looking at the root-heaved paths and seeing a lawsuit, the city attorney wrote the ordinance the rest of the world knows Carmel for: heels over two inches with less than a square inch of bearing surface are prohibited on the public streets without a permit. The permit is free at City Hall, nobody has ever been cited, and visitors collect the certificate as a souvenir.
At 5:12 on the morning of April 18, 1906, the ground moved for the better part of a minute and San Francisco stopped existing as anyone had known it. More than two hundred thousand people were homeless; the bohemian cafés were rubble. For a remarkable number of writers and painters the answer was simple: follow Sterling. Mary Austin came and wrote in a treehouse she called the Wickiup. Jack London came and went. The photographer Arnold Genthe came, and the MacGowan sisters, and Jimmy Hopper. An Arts and Crafts Club, formed in 1905, gave them all something to argue about. By 1910 the San Francisco Call could report that sixty percent of the houses in Carmel had been built by people devoting their lives to the aesthetic arts, and that year Herbert Heron carved an outdoor stage out of the woods and called it the Forest Theater. When the village incorporated on October 31, 1916, the poets ran the council — Heron and the writer Perry Newberry would both serve as mayor — and they had chosen unpaved streets, tents and rough cottages over everything a real city offered.
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.
