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The businessman, Samuel Finley Brown Morse (1885-1969), nephew of Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872), inventor of the telegraph, took over the Pacific Improvement Companies with a mandate to liquidate its assets. The company, founded originally by the "Big Four"--Leland Stanford (1824-1893), Mark Hopkins (1813-1878), Charles Crocker (1822-1888) and Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900)-- the extraordinarily wealthy founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, had acquired, by the twentieth century, a sprawling and floundering collection of properties and other investments. Morse sold off unprofitable enterprises and gradually refashioned the company's real estate portfolio, focusing on building up recreational holdings in the Monterey, CA, region. Working with financing provided by the banker and San Francisco power broker Herbert Fleishhacker (1872-1957), Morse founded the Del Monte Properties Company in 1919, to accelerate development of the Pebble Beach area. Morse's new company paid $1.34 million for 7,000 acres of Monterey County coastline, 1,100 acres encompassing the Rancho Laureles, the Monterey County Water Works, and the aging Hotel Del Monte #2 built in 1888. Just after creating the Del Monte Properties Company, Morse commissioned the erection of the Del Monte Lodge. The Lodge became well-known among golfing enthusiasts who played on Morse's celebrated nearby courses, most notably the Pebble Beach Golf Links laid out between 1916-1919. It stood on property previously occupied by the Crocker Family's Pebble Beach Lodge between 1908-1917, when it burned.

The Del Monte Properties Company became known as the Pebble Beach Company (PBC) in 1977. The Twentieth Century Fox motion picture studio, awash in cash following the huge success of Star Wars, spent some of it on the Pebble Beach Company in 05/1979. Denver oil billionaire Marvin Davis (1925-2004), (who bought Fox in partnership with the shady commodities trader Marc Rich [b. 1934]), sold the Pebble Beach Company to Minuro Isutani, a Japanese multimillionaire and golfing enthusiast, in 1990. He sold the company to the Lone Cypress Company, a partnership of the Japanese Sumitomo Bank and the Taiheiyo Club, a Japanese golf course management company in 03/1992. In 1999, a consortium of golf-loving celebrities and businessmen pooled their money and obtained additional capital from a subsidiary of the General Electric Corporation, to buy the PBC and have managed its holdings, including the Lodge at Pebble Beach, since that time. Tel: 831.624.3811 (2011).

PCAD id: 16872