Carmel-by-the-Sea

City in Monterey County, west-central California, USA, at the south of the Monterey Peninsula, on the Carmel River and Carmel Bay, 5 km/3 mi south-southwest of Monterey; population (1990) 4,200. Until the 1900s, when it became a popular artists' and writers' retreat, Carmel was a village in a cattle-grazing area. After World War II, it became increasingly a tourist resort, and is now home to the wealthy and prominent.

Carmel's noted residents have included the poet Robinson Jeffers, whose Tor House, with the stone tower he built and wrote in, is to the south of the city centre; photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston; and actor Clint Eastwood, who was elected mayor in 1986.

Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra is buried at San Carlos Borromeo del Río Carmelo Mission (1771). Pebble Beach is just to the northwest and Point Lobos just to the south.