Published May 8, 2025
BY AVERY PALSHAW
Along Carmel-by-the-Sea’s famous Scenic Road, which curves between Monterey cypresses and runs beside the jagged Carmel bay, lies a little stone cottage and tower. In the days before homes sprouted up around Tor House and Hawk Tower, American poet Robinson Jeffers resided on the property, learning from and becoming inspired by the land. His legacy among the Carmel community remains prominent today, as his narrative poems and philosophies live on.
Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on Jan. 10, 1887, to Annie Robinson Tuttle and William Hamilton Jeffers, a Presbyterian minister, the poet grew up in an environment that fostered learning. An outstanding scholar, Jeffers was well-versed in history, fluent in five languages, graduated high school at 16 and earned a bachelor’s degree by age 18. The academic studied medicine and forestry and dabbled in poetry in his spare time, but did not consider himself to be very good at it at the time.
Robinson Jeffers’ poetry was greatly inspired by the natural beauty of the Carmel area. courtesy of TOR HOUSE FOUNDATION
In 1906, Jeffers struck up a controversial love affair with Una Call Kuster, the wife of well-known Los Angeles attorney Edward Kuster. After the scandal reached the front page of The Los Angeles Times and the Kusters divorced, Jeffers and Una finally were married in 1913. A year later, the couple moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Jeffers ultimately decided to dedicate his life to poetry.
“Una was extremely important to Jeffers’ life and to his poetry,” says Eric Smith, a docent for the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. “None of it could have existed without her. She structured their daily life [in Carmel], she kept him going, she eliminated his distractions and kept him focused on the life that they were making here.”
A few years after Una gave birth to twin boys, Donnan and Garth, the young family bought undeveloped land on Carmel Point and began building Tor House. With the help of skilled contractor Michael J. Murphy, the Jeffers brought their vision to life of an English-inspired granite cottage built upon a tor, a rocky outcrop rising from a hill.
“In 1919 we built Tor House on a knoll where stones jutting out of the treeless moor reminded us of tors on Dartmoor,” Una wrote in her article, “How Carmel Won Hearts of Jeffers Family,” which was featured in the Apr. 19, 1940 edition of The Carmel Pine Cone. “Our favorite walk had been along the grass grown track that wound around the [Carmel] Point.”
The Tor House Foundation now hosts an annual garden party at this historic landmark. courtesy of TOR HOUSE FOUNDATION
Upon request from his beloved wife, Robinson Jeffers, better known as “Robin,” began constructing Hawk Tower by hand. The poet worked on the structure from 1920-24, hauling large granite rocks straight from the beach and sea.
According to Smith, this methodical process inspired much of Jeffers’ poetry, as he was fascinated by the permanence of the granite and the art of stone masonry. Over the course of his life, Jeffers wrote many poems about the local area and his home, including “Carmel Point,” “Tor House,” “Ghost” and “Ascent To The Sierras.”
Because the Jeffers family shared a love for geology, traveling and art, unique stones and tiles can be found throughout Tor House’s exterior. The home features elements from the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Pueblo Native Americans in New Mexico, Beijing, the Himalayas and more.
Jeffers was best known for his lengthy narrative poems, an unconventional and controversial style at the time. Though he was writing in the Modernist period, the Pennsylvania native seemed to take a lot of inspiration from the Romantic period of poetry given his reverence for nature.
“He wrote a lot about Carmel Point and natural processes and wrote super descriptive poetry, so he was definitely not as avant-garde as his peers at the time,” explains Carmel High School English teacher Barbara McBride, who grew up seeing Tor House while on family vacations to Carmel.
Dedicating Hawk Tower to his wife, Robinson Jeffers inscribed their initials above the stone doorway. courtesy of TOR HOUSE FOUNDATION
Smith says that even Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck read Jeffers’ poetry, and the two had a mutual respect for one another.
“Jeffers’ poetry definitely brings you right here to Carmel the way Steinbeck brings you to the Monterey Peninsula,” adds McBride.
Jeffers received much attention in the 1920s and 30s, but due to his outspoken anti-war beliefs and critical view of human nature, his work became less popular in later decades. Several of his poems did resurface during the 1960s environmental movement.
“His stories often highlighted the worst aspects of human nature and how people treated each other, things that were difficult in those days for people to read and not be offended by,” says Smith.
Jeffers’ rather cynical view of human nature and its tendency to self-destruct stemmed largely from his love for the natural world. Living in such a picturesque landscape, the writer took note of his surroundings, from the local meadows to the red-tailed hawk that often visited him.
“He has definitely affected my perspective of the area, especially in regards to appreciating the natural beauty,” says CHS senior Callum Jeffers, a descendant of the poet. “That’s something that my great-great-grandfather really admired when he decided to set up his home and his family here.”
On Jan. 20, 1962, 12 years after Una’s death, Jeffers passed peacefully in his treasured coastal California home. His legacy lives on in the now-famous cypress trees he planted throughout Carmel, in the tower he built with his own two hands and in the words he crafted on paper.
The Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation was established in 1978 to ensure that Tor House and Hawk Tower be preserved and protected, and since then the site has been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places and was recently deemed a National Historic Landmark.
Callum says his family still remains involved with the foundation through volunteering at the annual Tor House Spring Garden Party, held May 4 and open to the public.
“I do hope that [Jeffers] is able to inspire and be appreciated by people to come,” says Callum, who says he may be interested in exploring writing in the future.
Additionally, the Robinson Jeffers Association publishes the journal “Jeffers Studies,” provides resources to those interested in reading Jeffers’ work and promotes the discussion and teaching of his poetry.
To the unknowing eye, the granite tower on Scenic Road may seem lonesome or out of place. In truth, Tor House is a time capsule, each stone dragged from the sea, yet never weighing as much as the words of the great poet who lived there.
