They lived in the area from about Point Sur south to Big Creek, and inland including the upper tributaries of the Carmel River and Arroyo Seco watersheds.

[3] Archaeological evidence shows that the Esselen lived in Big Sur as early as 3500 BC, leading a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence.

[4] The aboriginal people inhabited fixed village locations, and followed food sources seasonally, living near the coast in winter to harvest rich stocks of otter, mussels, abalone, and other sea life.

[5] The native people hollowed mortar holes into large exposed rocks or boulders which they used to grind the acorns into flour.

A few months later they joined a wagon train which followed the Butterfield Overland Stage route from St. Louis, Missouri, west to California.

But a neighbor told them that to the south of Rancho El Sur in a place known as Pacific Valley there remained good grazing land.

[10] On October 5, 1869, the Pfeiffers boarded the Northern Pacific Transportation Company’s 222 feet (68 m) side wheel passenger steamer Sierra Nevada at the Folsom Street wharf in San Francisco with their livestock and headed 120 miles (190 km) south to Monterey.

[14][15] Michael's son John and his wife Florence Zulema built their own cabin on the north bank of the Big Sur River in 1884.

[19] As was customary at the time, the Pfeiffer family welcomed travelers along the trail to Posts and the southern Big Sur region into their one room cabin.

On one occasion, a repeat guest whom John Pfeiffer disliked stopped at the house with four friends and a string of five pack mules.

In her memoirs, she recounted telling him, "From now on, I expect to charge you so much for each horse, so much for each bed, and so much for each meal every time you stop here.

[22] After completing the eighth grade, their daughter Esther went to live with her grandmother in Monterey so she could attend high school.

Due to the stage schedule, she could not easily visit her parents, and returned home only at Christmas, Easter, and during summers.

[23] In 1930, John Pfeiffer was offered $210,000 (or about $3,846,000 today) for his land by a Los Angeles developer who intended to build a subdivision.

Pfeiffer wanted to preserve the land he and his family had grown to love, and instead sold 700 acres (2.8 km2) to the state of California in 1933.

Mud slides caused by the Basin Complex fire necessitated rerouting the Pfeiffer Falls Trail, re-opened 13 years later in 2021.

Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park was damaged by the Basin Complex Fire during June and July 2008, which burned 162,818 acres (658.90 km2) in California.