Picture of Sam Hammond and the Cozens Family.
This excerpt come from the Cozens family archives. It is written by Sam Hammond, who was cousin to Bert Cozens (that never causes confusion). Bert was my wife's great grandfather.
During the prohibition years there was quite a lot of "rum-running" across the border from Mexico. In 1928 a boat was anchored offshore and a small boat brought quite a large number of five-gallon cans of pure grain alcohol. They had a man with a gun guarding these cans and a truck came to pick them up. But as the truck backed toward the water it broke down. By this time the sheriff had been notified and as his men approached, the "rum runners" fled. The tide came in and washed the cans along the beach and there was a scramble of local residents carrying them off and hiding them under the bushes along the bluff where they could pick them up later when the excitement had died down.
Along about that time there were many hard cobblestones washed ashore and piled up across the mouths of the sloughs. They were of a very hard material and no one seemed to know from whence they came. Someone got the idea of using them for grinding ore in Nevada and Utah mines. They had to be round enough to roll for this purpose so they had to be handpicked. I was one of those laborers. We put them in burlap bags. Then they were hauled by wagons pulled by four horses up to the Santa Fe depot and dumped into coal cars on the siding there to be hauled to the mines. There were groups doing this at La Costa [Ponto], Encinitas, Cardiff, and Del Mar. The winter tides kept carrying these cobbles south every year and now there seem to be very few left along the here.
Beacons Beach Leucadia, Thanksgiving weekend 2008,
See Also:
Romancing the Cobble
We're Back to Sand
Old School Cobbles
sand-beaches-kelp
You mean there were even more cobbles before they hauled wagon loads to Utah?
ReplyDelete22 dump trucks an hour/9 hours a day on Leucadia 101 for the next 4 weeks. Merry Xmas shopping or dining in Leucadia while the dump trucks roll.
ReplyDeleteCity has given Pacific Station the permit to haul the soil to Ponto Beach.
Hooray more sand!
ReplyDeleteThe public notice for the Pacific Station hauling route is on the city website. The dump trucks won't travel through 101 downtown Encinitas. The trucks will turn up Vulcan then to the freeway. Trucks on the way back drive through Leucadia.
ReplyDeleteThe hauling is scheduled to start Dec. 8. If you want the city to postpone the hauling until after the holiday season, protest now.
I agree... horray.... More Sand. Its needed and welcome
ReplyDeleteThe dirt being evacuated from downtown Encinitas is not sand, it's dirt. And this is not good for Ponto.
ReplyDeleteThey've dumped soil before at Ponto 15 years ago or so. Looks real gross on the beach, not like sand at all but damp and dank earth. The only reason you would ever put a clean towel down on that crap is if you lost a bet. I suppose once the orange soil cooties all wash off into the ocean, there will be a few granules of white sand added to the beach. Swell. If Ponto already had their whoopdeedo developement, there is no way they would allow it. But what is the old saying about that stuff that rolls downhill?
ReplyDeleteBut back to the thread, the cobblestone work is great, but the Cozens crew must have had that pic taken somewhere on the NCTD property. Scorchy.
The make up of sand and dirt is different. My daughter tells me sand is scillia based and dirt, or soil is carbon based. The dirt is suffocating the natural flora and fauna found in the tidepools. It is filling in the finger reefs.
ReplyDeleteThe Coastal Commission should not allow the dirt to be dumped on our beaches. I went for a walk the other day on the beach and had NEVER in thirty years, seen such ugly, dirty, black soil dumped and piled on the beaches. Pacific Station developer should have to dispose of his dirt from excavation as other developers have, NOT by conveniently dumping it on our beaches.