“Cheaters Liars and Thieves”..how Sam Morse saved the Monterey Peninsula from being the Coney Island of the West Coast.“

We are very fortunate to have Charley Osborne, grandson of the founder of Pebble Beach, share his research and stories of S.F.B. Morse.

Osborne, is the author of the recently published, “Boss: The Story of S.F.B. Morse”. Raised in Pebble Beach, he serves on several business and nonprofit groups along the Monterey Peninsula. He is Chairman of the $2 billion money management firm Osborne Partners Capital Management in San Francisco. In addition he took over running the family real estate business in Carmel in 1994 after his father Richard passed away.

His interest in writing a book about his grandfather S. F. B. Morse started five years ago when a friend asked him a stimulating question: “ I know what Morse did, but why did he do it?” Charley set about finding out the answer to that.

After five years of research including museum and library visits, research in old newspapers, interviews with people who knew him (including his mother, SFB’s daughter) and reading Morse’s memoirs he believes he found the answer. Sam Morse was an artist by temperament and a developer by design. When he saw the nearly empty Monterey Peninsula in 1915 he fell in love. He knew exactly what this 20,000 acre canvas should look like, and he didn’t trust anyone else to paint it. 100 years ago, almost to this day, he bought the properties and started painting.