Among these standard epistolary gestures Mattie inserted a curious aside: "Why don't all of the Southern people try to go to Mexico? All here are thinking strongly of it."
To figure out "here," you have to check the postmark: "Purissima, San Mateo, Calif. January 7, 1866."
 Poison oak and honeysuckle obscure the leaning and toppled headstones that date back to the 1800s in the old Purissima Cemetery. |
Nothing of Purissima, however, still stands, save for a scattering of tombstones and grave markers tucked away in the brush south of Verde Road near the junction of Highway 1. The tombstones represent the once idyllic Purissima Cemetery that overlooks Purissima Creek and which is now hidden from view by vegetation.
Some cemetery residents, such as John B. Butts - originally a native of Hanover, Germany, who died on Feb. 6, 1889 - have an eternal view of the creek below and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Many headstones are detached from the base; some of them lay in large chunks near a grave, and others have entirely disappeared. Whether missing or broken headstones are the work of vandals, or possibly the work of family members who wanted to salvage them for safekeeping, is unclear.
A recent visit uncovered about 10 headstones marking single graves, a handful of tombstones marking family plots with multiple graves and a number of flat grave markers. Poison oak suffuses the area, and makes it extremely difficult to explore the cemetery at all.
The cemetery, in particular, and the town, in general, has occasionally captivated Coastsiders and history buffs interested in learning how Purissima disappeared while Half Moon Bay flourished.
Half Moon Bay resident Dayna Chalif visited the cemetery twice in 2005 in order to learn more about it. Describing herself as an avid genealogist (she has also explored Pilarcitos cemetery among many others in the area), Chalif found many headstones and checked them against any older records she could find. She posted her results online, and they eventually ended up on the Wikipedia entry for Purissima. (The entry was created in November 2006 and was most recently updated in June.)
Based on her research, Chalif has developed some guesses as to why Purissima succumbed. "The town's prominent citizens died in the same amount of time," she said. Moreover, the area's agricultural wealth - it mostly comprised farmers drawn to the land by its rich soil - couldn't match the ease with which people could access Half Moon Bay. "Purissima was supposed to be the big town on the coast," Chalif said, but it "was harder to get to."
The county archives contain a student monograph written by Blair Hyde, a 1939 student at San Mateo County Community College, titled: "Purisima: The Ghost Town of San Mateo County." (Many sources conflict on whether Purissima had one 's' or two.)
Hyde conducted interviews with relatives of former residents, took photos of extant buildings and researched early county records.
His research concluded that the family of Henry Dobbel, whose tombstone still stands tall in the cemetery, constituted the town's royalty. Dobbel bought hundreds of acres and tried farming a variety of crops. He also owned a general store that, together with a saloon, dance hall and blacksmith shop, constituted Purissima's town center.
"Towering above them all," Hyde wrote, was Dobbel's two-story "mansion."
A handwritten note from Dobbel's granddaughter, M. H. McAulay, made its way into the Purissima archives in the 1960s. The note hints at one way that Dobbel made his fortune before settling in Purissima. McAulay claimed that Dobbel, another of the town's German natives, imported a waffle iron from his home country in 1851 and owned the first restaurant in San Francisco to serve waffles.
Hyde also analyzed Purissima's demographics in comparison to Half Moon Bay's. "Spanishtown, as it was then called, was a thriving settlement, but the town was composed mainly of Spanish-Mexicans," Hyde wrote. "There was a natural tendency for the incoming Americans to band together at Purissima." Nonetheless, Purissima was, as Hyde eventually concluded, "destined to sink into the depths of oblivion."
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