Point Lobos State Natural Reserve sits on land that Alexander Allan bought in 1898, not to develop, but to save from development. Three years after his death in 1933, it became part of California's State Parks system.

Before Allan, the reserve's coves had been worked by Chinese abalone fishermen, Japanese deep-water divers in suits, and Portuguese whalers who kept a lookout on Whalers Knoll and rowed out to harpoon thirty-ton grey whales by hand. The reserve contains one of only two naturally occurring stands of Monterey cypress in the world, along with sea lion colonies, harbor seals and, between December and May, migrating gray whales.

VoiceMap's Carmel to Big Sur Driving Tour moves through the reserve, tracing its layered history from the Rumsien people to the whalers, abalone hunters and the architect who understood what Point Lobos was worth before anyone else did.