Bluff Top Trail—Dana Point

Doheny State Beach.

A faint, but brisk breeze blew off the Pacific Ocean as Kaitlyn and I began our early morning run. I wore two layers of shirts, a stocking cap, and knit gloves. The smell of salt and seaweed swirled in the air as we left the pavement and ran along the sandy beach to the point where San Juan Creek runs into the sea. There we stopped and watched early morning surfers and the sun as it rose just behind San Clemente.

We returned to the pavement and ran along Park Lantern until we hit Dana Point Harbor Drive, then we crossed the street and stopped and stretched on the grass at Heritage Park. Here the sidewalk curls back and forth up the slope of the hill, toward the top of the bluffs at Dana Point.

Once on top, we came to El Camino Capistrano, a quaint little street with well-maintained homes and finely manicured lawns. I noticed one home that looked like a two-storied cottage with thatched roof.

Home on El Camino Capistrano.

At the end of the road, where it meets with Street of the Violet Lantern, I found what I was looking for: Bluff Top Trail. To call it a trail might be a bit of an exaggeration. It is more of a concrete sidewalk with stairs and a few historical markers along the way. It hugs the ledge of the bluff and offers fine view of the harbor and Pacific Ocean.

All I was expecting that morning was a jog to a new location. What I didn't expect, however, was a history lesson. Not far into the path, there is a statue of a sailor heaving what appears to be a cape over the cliff. I learned from the sign that this is not a cape at all, but a cowhide, and it was part of the hide trade that was a lucrative operation during the 1800's along the coast of California. The statue depicts a Yankee sailor tossing a hide to the crew of a boat who waits on the beach below. These sailors became known as hide droghers.

Further down the pathway is a row of concrete arches with vines growing over the crown, and the sidewalk passing through the span. These arches were supposed to become part of the Dana Point Inn, a resort hotel began by S.H. Woodruff in 1930. With the stock market crash and subsequent depression, the construction was halted, and today, only the ruined arches remain.

Ruined arches of the Dana Point Inn, began in 1930.

The path crosses a small, but rugged ravine, and travels just a little bit further until it comes to an end (as far as I could tell) at Street of the Amber Lantern. From here there is a small terrace with a great view of Dana Point and the harbor.

Although our run along the Bluff Top Trail was short-lived, it sparked an interest into the history of the hide droghers. After returning home, I began to do a little research. According to Ballou's Monthly Magazine from 1884, hide droghing means: “cruising up and down a coast, and gathering in hides at every port at which a vessel stops.” Additional research revealed that the term “hide droghing” was used by Richard Henry Dana in his historical book, “Two Years Before the Mast.” In fact, it is from him that Dana Point receives its name.

Dana left Boston Harbor in 1834 aboard the brig Pilgrim. Their ship rounded Cape Horn and continued northward to the coast of California, where he would spend the next year collecting hides for the ship at ports in San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco.

The harbor at Dana Point.

When Dana arrived at the future location of Dana Point during the spring of 1835, the surrounding land was very wild, with the only civilization being the mission at San Juan Capistrano, some two miles inland. According to reports from other boat crews, the area wasn't too promising: “We had heard much of this place from the Lagoda's crew, who said it was the worst place in California.”

Dana gave his own opinion of the location: “San Juan is the only romantic spot on the coast. The country here for several miles is high table-land, running boldly to the shore, and breaking off in a steep cliff, at the foot of which the waters of the Pacific are constantly dashing. For several miles the water washes the very base of the hill, or breaks upon ledges and fragments of rocks which run out into the sea. . . . Directly before us rose the perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet. How we were to get the hides down, or goods up, upon the table-land on which the Mission was situated, was more than we could tell.”

To work in the hide trade was a very labor intensive job, not for the physically weak. The sailors not only had to toss these heavy hides, but also carried them on their heads, cured them, and stowed them away. During one six to eight day period, Dana tossed between eight and ten thousand hides, to the point of his wrists becoming lame.

Here on Dana Point, the hides had been collected by the Natives and brought from the Mission. Now it was up to the sailors to climb the steep embankment and collect the hides.

“We pulled aboard, and found the long-boat hoisted out, and nearly laden with goods: and, after dinner, we all went on shore in the quarter-boat, with the long-boat in tow. As we drew in, we descried an ox-cart and a couple of men standing directly on the brow of the hill; and having landed, the captain took his way round the hill, ordering me and one other to follow him. We followed, picking our way out, and jumping and scrambling up, walking over briers and prickly pears, until we came to the top. Here the country stretched out for miles, as far as the eye could reach, on a level, table surface, and the only habitation in sight was the small white mission of San Juan Capistrano, with a few Indian huts about it, standing in a small hollow, about a mile from where we were. Reaching the brow of the hill, where the cart stood, we found several piles of hides, and Indians sitting round them. One or two other carts were coming slowly on from the mission, and the captain told us to begin and throw the hides down. This, then, was the way they were to be got down,— thrown down, one at a time, a distance of four hundred feet!

“Down the height we pitched the hides, throwing them as far out into the air as we could; and as they were all large, stiff, and doubled, like the cover of a book, the wind took them, and they swayed and eddied about, plunging and rising in the air, like a kite when it has broken its string. As it was now low tide, there was no danger of their falling into the water; and, as fast as they came to the ground, the men below picked them up, and, taking them on their heads, walked off with them to the boat. It was really a picturesque sight: the great height, the scaling of the hides, and the continual walking to and fro of the men, who looked likes mites, on the beach. This was the romance of hide droghing!”

Statue of a hide drogher on the Bluff Top Trail in Dana Point.

It is difficult to envision what Dana Point may have looked like in 1835 as one scans the modern landscape: large homes dangle over the cliffs, cars buzz along the road, and an artificial harbor that formerly didn't exist—with yachts, cement walkways, and a protecting jetty.

Richard Henry Dana's precise and romantic writing makes me wish I were a sailor aboard the Pilgrim:

“There was a grandeur in everything around, which gave a solemnity to the scene, a silence and solitariness which affected every part! Not a human being but ourselves for miles, and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great Pacific! And the great steep hill rising like a wall, and cutting us off from the world, but the 'world of waters'!” ♠

Harbor and cliffs at Dana Point.