"Will Liz Taylor change Big Sur?" That was the question the San Francisco Examiner's society columnist asked the world recently, after she had scrambled, along with other minions of the West Coast press, to report the doings of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in California's most famous "Bohemia," a mountainous and sparsely populated stretch of coastline some 150 miles below San Francisco. The occasion was the filming of a few scenes for a movie called The Sandpiper, starring Liz as a lady painter with a yen for rocky beaches and Dick as an offbeat beachcomber with a yen for lady painters. The scenes were shot here because Big Sur has some of the most spectacular scenery in America: booming surf, rocky beaches, and pine-topped mountains slanting straight to the sea. In the years after World War II this rugged South Coast, as the old-timers call it, got a valid reputation as a hideaway for artists, writers, and other creative types. Local history abounds with famous names. Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, lived here for 19 years. The late Robinson Jeffers was Big Sur's original poet laureate, and folk singer Joan Baez is still considered a local, although she recently moved to Carmel Highlands, a few miles north. Other famous residents have been Dennis Murphy, author of a best seller called The Sergeant, prizewinning poet Eric Barker, sculptor Benjamin Bufano, and photographer Wynn Bullock. Unfortunately, that era is just about ended. Big Sur is no longer a peaceful haven for serious talent, but a neurotic and dollar-conscious resort area. Not surprisingly, nearly all the old talent has gone elsewhere. Eric Barker still lives here, but he doesn't attract much attention. The queen bee resident these days is Kim Novak, who claims to be a serious painter and never tires of telling reporters and Hollywood columnists how much she enjoys the Big Sur social scene. Among local traditionalists, Miss Novak is seen as a sign of the times, a prize exhibit of where Big Sur is headed. Until the past few years the South Coast was a genuine refuge from the pressures and tensions of the modern American rat race. A man with enough determination could come here without friends or benefactors and learn to live well and quietly, for very little money, while doing pretty much as he pleased. 

This is what attracted the talent—although you didn't have to be artistic to live here, only busy and emotionally self-sufficient. Few people had money for booze or stylish leisure. They spent their time working at whatever they had come here to do, whether it was writing, painting, building, or just getting by on a small income. Pleasures were simple and mainly sensual. But the new Big Sur is a different bag of nuts, as it were, and many residents are deeply pessimistic about the future. This coast is fast becoming a very commercial property, a natural expansion area for the tourist shops and cocktail lounges of Carmel, a happy "discovery" for the bored socialites of Pebble Beach and San Francisco, and a very "in" place to visit from Hollywood or Beverly Hills. The change is so obvious that there is talk of designing a new Big Sur flag: crossed martini glasses and a massive cheeseburger on a field of financial green. "And a bit of tweed for dignity," suggests a former resident, "with a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch strolling boots just under the cheeseburger." Big Sur is not hard to find on the map; it's a dot on the coast, 27 miles south of Carmel, and cut off from the resto of California by the Santa Lucia mountain range and the huge Los Padres National Forest. But that dot is no more than a trading post: a post office, a gas station, a garage, a restaurant, and an all-purpose emporium called The Village Store. "The Big Sur country," which is what the cognoscenti mean when they speak of Big Sur, begins just south of Carmel and rolls for 80 steep miles above the Pacific, down to the Hearst castle at San Simeon and the foggy fishing villages of Morro Bay. The 600 or so residents dwell above and below the highway. Some live in unpainted shacks — which used to be standard procedure — but more and more these days live in elegant, glass-walled homes with pools and imported furniture. In any case, a visitor driving through will be too busy watching the road to concern himself with local architecture. The only paved and public thoroughfare in Big Sur is Highway No.1, and it's no route to take if you're nervous or pressed for time. Some of the sharpest turns are four to eight hundred feet above the ocean. The fog is dense in summer months, and winter rainstorms bring mudslides and boulders thumping down on the highway from rocky cliffs above.