Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainBleached cypress on 17-Mile Drive tied to a 'Lady in Lace' legend
Pescadero Point, 17-Mile Drive, Pebble Beach, CA 93953
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
The Ghost Tree stands inside the gated Del Monte Forest; 17-Mile Drive charges a per-vehicle entry fee (around $12, waived for some lodging and dining guests). The pull-out at Pescadero Point is free to view once inside.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved coastal pull-out with a short walk to a rocky headland overlook; surf zone below is hazardous.
Equipment
Photos OK
17-Mile Drive scenic landmark · Monterey cypress grove · Pescadero Point big-wave surf break
Pescadero Point sits roughly two-thirds of the way along 17-Mile Drive, the toll road that loops through the gated Del Monte Forest between Pacific Grove and Carmel-by-the-Sea. The point is marked as stop 17 on the route's official map. The trees that give the spot its name are Monterey cypress, a species native to only two small groves on this stretch of the central California coast. Decades of salt spray and onshore wind have stripped and bleached the seaward cypress at Pescadero Point, leaving pale, contorted trunks that early visitors compared to ghosts or witches.
The headland is also a noted big-wave surf break. The reef off Pescadero Point focuses large winter swells into a heavy, shallow wave that surfers call Ghost Tree or Ghost Trees, ridden by tow-in surfers during the biggest Pacific storms. The surf zone is hazardous, and the overlook is fenced in places to keep visitors back from the cliff.
The land around Pebble Beach was part of the Mexican-era Rancho El Pescadero before the Pacific Improvement Company and its successors developed it as a resort and residential enclave in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 17-Mile Drive has operated as a paid scenic route since the resort era, and the Ghost Tree remains one of its signature photo stops.
Sources
The bleached cypress at Pescadero Point have a folk reputation that local tourism and ghost-lore pages repeat each Halloween. The central figure is a woman dressed in pale lace, sometimes called the Lady in Lace, said to stand among the trees and unsettle drivers and beachgoers when fog rolls in off the bay.
The stories disagree on who she is. Some accounts tie her tearful, mournful appearance to La Llorona, the weeping woman of Mexican folklore associated with drowned children near water. Others say she is the shade of Maria del Carmen Barreto, a Mexican-era landowner whose family once held the rancho lands around Pebble Beach, returning to look over property that is no longer hers. A third version, traded among surfers, casts her as a drowned big-wave rider lingering at the break that shares the tree's name.
Reported phenomena are modest and consistent with a roadside legend: a figure glimpsed in the fog, a sudden cold sensation, the feeling of being watched at the overlook. No single documented event anchors the tales, and the area's tourism office lists the Ghost Tree among Monterey-area haunts more for its eerie appearance than for any verified case. The site is presented here as folklore rather than an investigated haunting.
Notable Entities
Stop number 17 on the 17-Mile Drive points-of-interest map. Visitors pull off at Pescadero Point to photograph the weathered Monterey cypress against the surf and the cliffs of the Del Monte Forest. The pull-out is reached after paying the road's per-vehicle entry fee.
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