Museum Visit: Presidio of Monterey

The Presidio of Monterey Museum
Corporal Ewing Road in Lower Presidio Historic Park
Monterey, California

The Presidio Museum is a small building located in the
Lower Presidio Historic Park in Monterey, California.

Some of our most interesting history trips materialize on the fly, and for some reason that seems to happen quite often in California. For example, a few years ago Sheila and I were headed out for a day hike in Pinnacles National Park when a rain drop hit the windshield (Californians DO NOT go hiking in the rain, unlike our Seattle-selves). So we just steered right over to Salinas to see the Steinbeck Center, which turned out to be one of my favorite museum experiences of all time. But I digress...here's how we wound up at the Presidio:

A couple of weeks ago, Sheila and I are headed over to Monterey to ride our bikes on the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail. This "Monterey Bay bike path" runs about 18 miles from Castroville through Seaside and old Monterey right past Fisherman's Wharf and Cannery Row up to Pacific Grove. Anyway...we unload the bikes and we've got a flat with no spare tube or patch kit. As I almost never say (out loud), when disaster strikes go find a museum. Instead of biking we decided to spend the day walking around Monterey, which included a stop at the Presidio of Monterey Museum.

During our visit the museum was staffed by a very
well-informed docent.

The Presidio of Monterey started out as a Spanish military installation established by Captain Gaspar de Portola in 1770, the same year that Father Junipero Serra founded the nearby Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. The mission and military presence in Monterey Bay was, according to Portola's orders, "to occupy and defend the port from the atrocities of the Russians, who were about to invade us." Makes sense. But as I'm sure you know, the Russians did not exploit their position in California. Not did the Spanish fully occupy California either. The port, the fort, and the rest of the Golden State came into U.S. possession in 1846 during the war with Mexico. Since then, the Presidio has been an American military installation to some degree or another. Most important to me is that the Presidio of Monterey was home to the 11th Cavalry Regiment from 1919 until 1940. As a veteran of the Blackhorse Regiment, you feel kind of drawn to the place. Today, the Presidio is home to the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) or, as everyone in the Army called it, "the army language school."

Unfortunately, the museum has only a few artifacts, but
has well prepared waysides and photo displays.

The Presidio is a small post, surrounded by the city of Monterey. But the post museum is easy to drive to. The Defense Department gave a portion of the installation to Monterey, which has dubbed it "Lower Historic Park" and there is no gate guards or security to pass to reach the museum. I highly recommend driving up to the museum though. Although you can see it from Fisherman's Wharf, traffic and lack of sidewalks makes it really not feasible to walk or bike there from the marina area. The museum is a small building, and unfortunately they do not hold a great many artifacts. Also, if you are a fan of museum bookstores, there really isn't one here. So I would suggest you read up on the history of the Presidio before you come. If you don't want to invest in some pre-visit reading, not to worry. The volunteer docent on duty during our visit was quite knowledgeable and very eager to share that knowledge with everyone who stopped by. There were two things that I enjoyed most about the Presidio of Monterey Museum. First was that the museum had acquired some copies of old Signal Corps film footage and had set up small theater station to watch it. My favorite video of course was the film of cavalry recruits in the 1930s learning how to ride and care for their horses. The second thing was simply the location. If you walk across from the small museum parking area toward the bay, you'll see a monument to Father Serra. From the location of that monument you'll be able to see why that position was originally chosen as a location for a fort. One has a commanding view of Monterey Bay.

The location of the Spanish Fort would have had command
over the entire Monterey Bay.

Although the museum visit probably only took about 30-45 minutes, by an odd coincidence, we were there at the same time, and we had the opportunity to meet the current Command Sergeant Major of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, CSM Stephen J. Travers. He was on vacation with his family (on their way back down to Fort Irwin, the current home of the 11th ACR), when they decided to stop and see the former home of the 11th Cavalry, just like us. Did I tell you that this place has a certain draw? CSM Travers was a very personable and impressive individual and I enjoyed meeting and talking with him briefly. He graciously invited us to visit the Fort Irwin and 11th Armored Cavalry Museum at the National Training Center (NTC), which I fully intend to do one day soon.

Recommended Reading

I'm going to hazard a guess that the Presidio of Monterey does not get as much visitor traffic as they would like. Heck, even the Monterey County Convention and Visitors website fails to mention the POM museum from their "Historic Attractions" page! I admit that it is a small museum that doesn't take much time to walk through, but it is an enjoyable visit. Additionally, with no maneuver units based at Presidio and Fort Ord now closed and turned into a park, a visit to the Presidio of Monterey Museum will show you how important the Army was to the development of the central California coast. You won't regret adding the museum to your Monterey itinerary.

Remembering the Cold War

For me, one of the frustrating things about getting older is that what seems like ancient history to young people just happened yesterday in my mind.  But after finding a couple of videos on YouTube that have to do with the 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment during the Cold War, I counted up the years.  It’s been almost 23 years since the fall of the “Iron Curtain,” and going on 24 since I left the "Fulda Gap."  It did seem like yesterday, at least until I took a look at these old clips.

I have not written much about my own military service in this blog.  I share a portion of it here, just to contribute part of my own "oral history."  I served in the 11^th ACR, the Blackhorse Regiment, as an aviation officer and scout helicopter pilot from 1985 to 1988.  During those Cold War years, the mission of the 11^th Armored Cavalry was to patrol approximately 230 miles of the East German border.  We linked up with the 2^nd Armored Cavalry to our south, and the British Army of the Rhine on the north.  The Regiment’s headquarters was based in the town of Fulda, about twenty miles from the border.

Just before I came to the unit, the Regiment had made a promotional video that everyone called “The Blackhorse Movie.”  Self-serving and corny, but man, as a new lieutenant in the Blackhorse, I thought it was cool.  I had a copy of my own until the VHS tape finally disintegrated.   But isn’t YouTube wonderful?  Someone posted a copy.  It’s just under fifteen minutes long, but I think you’ll enjoy it.  It’s got a good history lesson on the beginning of the Cold War in Germany:

Fast forward two years to a day or so before Thanksgiving in 1987.  The whole community was abuzz, because the Today Show was going to broadcast live from the “frontiers of freedom” in Fulda, Germany.  That same week the morning show had been filmed at an Air Force base in England and on the deck of an aircraft carrier at sea.  The largest building available was our aircraft hangar on Sickles Army Airfield, so that’s where they would broadcast from.  For days prior to the broadcast our operations were curtailed.  No training flights, only the required daily border surveillance missions.  The hangar had to be cleared out and all of the aircraft were lined up on the runway.  I assumed that any conflict with the Soviets would be put on hold until Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel had left town.

I had just recently been made the squadron’s S-2 (staff intelligence officer).  I was given a mission to lead a flight of helicopters carrying a camera crew up to a border outpost (O.P. Tennessee).  The flight was delayed due to forecasted clouds over a pass we had to fly through to get to the border.  When our squadron commander took command a few months earlier, he gave a speech where he promised that safety was paramount and there would be no more launching of “weather birds” to prove the Air Force weather forecasters wrong.  Well, when he saw me on the flight line he sternly reminded me that these were important people with a schedule to keep.  He strongly suggested that I get in my little helicopter and go see for myself whether or not the pass was open.  So much for no weather birds.  We eventually got the camera crew up to the border.  The Russians were kind enough to send up a couple of their aircraft to see why we showed up with so many aircraft ourselves.  So the NBC folks shot a great segment and for a brief moment you could catch a glimpse of the tail of my aircraft on television.

Here’s a segment of that episode of the Today Show I found on YouTube:

I didn’t go to the hangar to watch the filming.  Instead I stayed in my office and watched it on television.  I was told that as soon as it was over, Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel walked off stage without looking back.  But Willard Scott (the jovial weatherman before Al Roker) stayed and signed autographs for every soldier and family member who wanted one.

Photo from article "Soviet Tanks As Far As The Eye Can See" 

We saw the Wall come down on television but we never really celebrated the end of the Cold War here in the United States.  It just sort of ended one day without notice and Bob’s your uncle, it wasn’t there anymore.  But we won it, sure enough.  And we did our job so well we never had to experience the horrors of the war we imagined with the Warsaw Pact.  It brought a smile to my face when I read an article at military.com and saw the pictures of all those Russian tanks we were so afraid of.  They’re for sale… and currently gathering rust in the Ukraine.