Asilomar is one of my favorite places in the world. It is just on the west side of the northern end of the Monterey peninsula in Central California, between the towns of Pacific Grove and Monterey to the east and Pebble Beach to the south. Although it is used as a geographical designation for that part of the peninsula, the name comes from a conference center created by the Young Women’s Christian Association (the YWCA), which sits on and behind sand dunes, just across the road from the surf and tide pools of the Pacific.

The following history is taken largely from the history page at the Asilomar Conference Center’s web site: http://www.visitasilomar.com/history/asilomar-the-complete-story.aspx. From 1900 the YWCA held annual meetings of its Pacific Coast Field Committee and a Western Regional Conference at a hotel in Santa Cruz, California. That hotel burned down in 1912, leading the committee decided to build its own site.

The Pacific Improvement Company, the eventual source of the Pebble Beach development, donated 30 acres on the peninsula, facing the ocean, to the YWCA to build western conference grounds. By 1913 they had already finished two buildings in the new facility, which needed a name. They held a contest among the membership and one Helen Salisbury, a Stanford student, won with a made-up but apt Spanish word – “Asilomar”. Asilo means asylum or place of refuge; mar means sea. Donations led to the purchase of 20 more acres and the addition of more buildings until, by the 1920s, the center was able to accommodate 500 guests. During the summer Asilomar was reserved for YWCA use, but religious groups, women’s training courses, and college conferences could use it the rest of the year.

The Depression ended Asilomar’s golden age. It had never been financially self-sustaining and in 1934 the national YWCA decided to close it. They tried to sell it but without success. Between then and 1947 it was leased as a private motel, used by the National Youth Authority, used for military families, and kept vacant. The YWCA began operating it as a conference facility again in 1947 with some success but by the early 1950s they had put it back on the market. After various perils, including a discussed sale for sand extraction, in 1956 the State of California bought Asilomar – both the dunes and the conference center. (It had already bought the beach across the street.) The beach, the dunes, and the conference center, a total of 91 acres, became a state park. The conference center has been managed for the state by various contractors ever since; it is widely used for conferences but (quiet, charming, and comparative inexpensive) individual rooms can also often be rented on a motel basis.

Asilomar’s charm is grounded in its forest, meadow, and dunes, shot through with glimpses of the rocky shore and pervaded by the buzz of the surf. But its architecture helps! The conference center is built in the California Craftsman or Arts and Crafts style with 16 of its early buildings designed by Julia Morgan, a legendary California architect. (Thirteen survive.) Morgan was the first female civil engineering graduate of UC Berkeley, the first woman to be admitted to the architecture program of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the first female licensed architect in California, and the main architect for Hearst Castle. Her Asilomar buildings, with their stress on light and their use of local wood and stone, are fine samples of her Craftsman style work. Subsequent construction, though not as gorgeous, has stayed true to her style, giving the conference center a unified architectural presence and one that seems perfectly attuned to its natural surroundings.

As is probably clear, I love it, and highly recommend it.

Hank Greely

Director, Center for Law and the Biosciences