Maybe like me, Pam Marino, the first time you understood what a sesquicentennial was came watching the brilliantly funny Christopher Guest mockumentary, Waiting for Guffman, in which the fictional small town of Blaine, Missouri was celebrating its 150th anniversary.
In Pacific Grove there is an actual sesquicentennial celebration underway, celebrating the founding of the town by its forefathers, Methodist ministers and lay members from San Francisco. In 1871 they began looking for a place to hold summer retreats. The Rev. W.S. Ross and his wife came upon Pacific Grove and found what they thought was the perfect place to be.
Land baron David Jacks donated land for the retreat area and on June 1, 1875, Ross and other ministers created the Pacific Grove Retreat Association in order to accept Jacks’ gift. The name “Pacific Grove” was created because the land was next to the Pacific Ocean and located in a grove of trees, according to Marabee Boone of the First United Methodist Church of P.G. The city would incorporate fourtee years later in 1889.
Earlier this year Boone realized the June 1 anniversary date was coming up and decided the church and the town needed to mark the auspicious occasion.
“It’s close to us because Pacific Grove was founded by Methodists. It’s in our DNA,” Boone says.
She got to work gathering volunteers and supporters to help her with the project, including the Heritage Society of P.G. and the P.G. Youth Ambassadors, among others.
“I think it’s really exciting,” she says of celebrating a sesquicentennial. “Not too many people will get to experience that kind of history.”
Boone’s roots in P.G.’s Methodist Church run deep. Her father, Bob Rush, was the supervisor who oversaw the building of First Methodist’s sanctuary on Sunset Drive. Church members broke ground in 1962 and completed the sanctuary in 1963.
Before the Sunset location, First Methodist was located in the heart of downtown, an important community gathering place, until the decision was made to build a new sanctuary near Asilomar. Boone remembers as a child processing from the original church carrying palm fronds to the new location on Palm Sunday in 1962.
I had never been inside the sanctuary and found it to be one of the most beautiful buildings in Pacific Grove, apart from the Julia Morgan buildings at the Asilomar Conference Grounds.
The sanctuary features a brick floor, soaring ceiling and large windows that look out onto a patio filled with cymbidium orchids and rhododendrons, in full bloom the day I spoke to Boone. Above the chancel is a stunning stained glass window that if you study it long enough reveals the outline of—what else—a butterfly, a symbol of the Resurrection.
There are no big events this weekend marking the June 1 date, but Boone and her team will celebrate with the public during the Youth Ambassador’s Summer Lights celebration, July 21-26, and at 2pm, Sunday, July 27, at the church, located at 915 Sunset Drive.
On that day the church will host “Fun at the First (Methodist) Church,” open to the public, featuring history, music and a sing-a-long, followed by ice cream in Grantham Hall on the church campus.
The event is free but the sesquicentennial team is requesting that people consider making a donation to the Chautauqua Hall restoration fund. (Chautauqua Hall was built soon after the retreat was founded and became an important meeting spot.) At all the events they’ll have a few replicas of the hall made by a volunteer, with slots on top where you can slip in some coins, cash or checks.
Here’s to Pacific Grove and its 150 years of existence, and thanks to the Methodists with the foresight to build a community in such a beautiful location.