Natural Nipomo: What is Nipomo?

Before we begin our discussion how Nipomo got to be the way it is today, we must first define what Nipomo is. This may be more complicated than it seems. As I wrote last week, Nipomo means something different to each individual. It’s a home, a workplace, a gas station. We must also remember it’s a nest, a burrow, a feeding ground, a place to lay roots, and innumerable other things to other creatures.

The name Nipomo has been given to many places and many things. Its first place-specific use was for the Chumash village, one of many spread up and down the coast from Malibu to Morro Bay. As there are many dialects within the range of the Chumash, the term Nipomo has several translations. It has been interpreted as meaning “village,” “at the promontory,” and most popularly, “at the foot of the hills.”

Juan Francisco Dana, the famed blonde son of Captain William Goodwin Dana, lived nearly a century in Nipomo and conveyed many of his life stories to Rocky Dana and Marie Harrington, who published them in The Blond Ranchero. One particular afternoon at the Adobe, Dana tells, a Chumash man, upon overhearing his mother say “Nipomo,” corrected her. “Ni-poh-mah,” said the native man, indicating the hills to the east. In fact, according to Dana, the rancho was known as “Nipoma” in its early years. “Nipoma” was even officially used in Nipomo’s first post office.

The first politically-defined Nipomo region was Captain Dana’s Rancho Nipomo, nearly 38,000 acres in size, granted to him by the Mexican government in 1837. Following the construction of the railroad in the 1880s, the township of Nipomo was established near the center of Rancho Nipomo. It was a compact but bustling town with as many as three saloons, the blond Dana notes.

Nipomo today is a sprawl. The majority of its population of over 13,000 (a huge leap from the hundreds of Chumash who likely inhabited the region) lives on the Nipomo Mesa. At 12,500 acres, the borders of the proposed city of Nipomo would encompass one third of Captain Dana’s original land grant. The proposed city limit would expand upon the limits of the Nipomo Community Services District, which omits much of the western and southern developed regions of the Mesa.

Much of the local geology also bears the Nipomo name. Nipomo Valley drains into Nipomo Creek, which forms the eastern edge of the Nipomo Mesa, which in turn is an ancient extension of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. At their maximum extent, places named Nipomo span more than 10 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the foot of the Temetatte Ridge, and more than five miles from Nipomo Hill, the northernmost tip of the Nipomo Mesa, to the Mesa’s southern bluffs.

Nipomo Mesa lupin (Lupinus nipomensis), a highly endangered plant, grows only in the Nipomo region. Arroyo Grande ceanothus bears Nipomo in its scientific name, Ceanothus impressus var. nipomensis. Plants with local names can be found far and wide, at least as far away as the UC Davis Arboretum where grows a Point Sal purple sage.

Much of the Nipomo Mesa, most of Nipomo Valley, the whole of the Guadalupe-Nipomo dunes and, the entire range of the Nipomo Mesa lupin lie outside the proposed city limits. The dunes lie even outside Captain Dana’s original land grant. It’s hard to pin down a border that includes everything that is Nipomo.

So what is Nipomo? It incorporates a diverse geology and several distinct plant communities. Its cultural limits have been expanding since the Europeans first came here centuries ago. It certainly transcends any political definitions we may impose on it. Maybe it’s just a state of mind.