Last week we ran Debbie Sklar’s post about Devil’s Pot in the Sunset Cliffs area. At that point, no one was certain where it used to be as it no longer exists, what due to the tremendous erosion the cliffs suffer every year.
Then “Larry OB” or Larry O’Brien responded to the post with this:
“In all fairness to Dave Bunnnell, [ed.:who performed a study of sections of cliffs cited by Debbie] back in 2008 he probably wasn’t aware of this (attached) photo of the early development of Sunset Cliffs. I think Devil’s Pot was filled and buried out in front of the mansion at Osprey Street.”
The photo he attached is above. It shows a couple of circular depressions along the cliffs in the foreground. It appears that Devil’s Pot was probably the circular “pot” on the left side in the photo. The mansion is just to the east of it, at the corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd and Osprey Street.
Before he moved from OB to northern California, Larry was probably the foremost expert on Sunset Cliffs, their history and erosion.
The location in the vintage post card image of the arching cliffs and white waves rolling through the central cave is where I used to fish with my friend John Graham in the late 1950s. John and I spent many hours pondering the function of the really large rusted iron ring cemented into a relatively level bench facing inward to the cove. Waves curled around the point and rolled back to our ledge. John and I once swam across the cove to inside a cave and climbed up slippery moss covered stairs to a cement block-sealed doorway. We also observed large broken sandstone rocks in the water that must have collapsed over the decades. Also, where we walked down to go fishing, there was or is a sloppy concrete pour where around 1960 the City Parks Department had a load of cement poured into a tunnel inside the arch. Before that tunnel was sealed, I peeked inside and observed pick marks on the walls that I interpreted to mean the tunnel was hand dug. Perhaps more significantly, I have copies of old photos from the 1915-1930s time period depicting a wooden bridge across the cove and have interpreted the iron ring to be an element of securing the ring. Though I never thought of it, I suppose the cove might be the same location as The Devil’s Pot, which was surely named to draw tourists from the 1915-1916 Panama California Exposition. And I am supposing this is also the landform from which the kids are jumping off Sunset Cliffs today.