BIG SUR

scenic region in western California, U.S., that comprises a 100-mile- (160-kilometre-) long, ruggedly beautiful stretch of seacoast along the Pacific Ocean. It extends southward from Carmel just south of Monterey (whence the name El Sur: The South) to the Hearst Castle at San Simeon. A winding, narrow, mountainous coastal road affords some spectacular views of the Pacific and the wayside wilderness areas of the Los Padres National Forest. The PfeifferBig Sur State Park (821 acres [332 hectares] of coastal redwood and chaparral) contains the village of Big Sur (30 miles south of Monterey) and borders the Big Sur River, a short stream in the Santa Lucia Range. The area, now popular with tourists and naturalists, was once a bleak wilderness. The splendour of its scenery and the loneliness of its 19th-century homesteaders have been interpreted by Robinson Jeffers in such poems as Women at Point Sur (1927). The poet's home (which he built of local rock and stone) is one of the area's landmarks. In 1986 a comprehensive zoning plan was adopted by Monterey county authorities that severely limited commercial development along a 68-mile (109-kilometre) stretch of Big Sur's twisting and mountainous shoreline.