Sculptor Harry Dick Ross, a close friend of Henry Miller, welcomed students and teachers annually to his Partington Ridge home. Children loved operating the various drawing devices he invented. One, he called a harmonograph, had a rotating drawing board suspended from the ceiling. It pivoted in a circular or figure eight motion. When a pen, much like the arm of an old record player, touched the drawing paper, marvelous swirling artwork appeared.

Over a 50 year period, Ross carved nearly all Big Sur’s signs simply to prevent inferior ones from littering the landscape. “This is just something I do because I’d prefer Big Sur had good-looking signs. And if someone like me doesn’t do them—well—other people might like them, but I don’t!” Some signs, such as the library and the school, he did without charging.  When a 1973 El Niño storm caused a slide that killed a CalTrans worker, it also took out a jewelry studio, a sculpture, a van, and the Ross "Coast Gallery" sign (later recovered in Pacific Grove). Carved by caring hands, Ross’s signs stand today, as no small part of his legacy, reminding locals and visitors alike that aesthetic, unobtrusive features fit best along the Big Sur coast.