Heart of the Valley

HEART OF THE VALLEY

HISTORY FROM SHIRLEY CONTRERAS A SPECIAL SECTION OF THE SANTA MARIA TIMES • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2018

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SANTA MARIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

P-38 fighters fly over the Santa Maria Valley during World War II.

When the P-38 Lightning flew above Santa Maria

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alifornia bore witness to some of the most traumatic stateside events that happened after Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941. The state was racked from north to south with nearpanic conditions as tens of thousands of its citizens expected similar attacks anytime.

True or not, fear took hold resulting in coastal cities being blacked out.

Radio stations went SHIRLEY CONTRERAS off the air, commercial airliners were grounded and ships were ordered to stay in port.

These, and many other measures, were seen to be absolutely necessary by the U.S. Army commanders because at the time of the Pearl Harbor invasion, the Army Air Force in California consisted of only 16 modern fighter planes available to defend the entire state.

In December of 1941, the U.S. States found itself fighting a war on two continents.

Strategic planning was not only necessary, but had to be made fast.

In early 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers, which planned to open an airfield to provide training for B-25 bomber pilots, purchased 160 acres land in Santa Maria from the Toy family at $79 per acre. By the time building began, the Army had acquired about 3,600 acres, located about 4 miles southwest of the city.

Because of its strategic location, the property was considered to be ideal for the training of bombardment groups prior to overseas duty.

With Col. Robin A. Day in command, the Santa Maria Army Air Field was officially activated upon direct orders from Washington

Historical snapshots The editors at the Santa Maria Times have put together this special section looking at some of the Santa Maria Valley's historical highlights. We hope you enjoy this selection of columns from historian Shirley Contreras.

After bombers were determined to be too heavy for runways, the Army Airfield became the final training site for P38 Lightning fighter groups on Sept. 16, 1943. on May 2, 1942, just short of five months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was said to have been one of the largest World War II bases on the West Coast.

The Santa Maria Air Field was placed under the command of the Fourth Air Force, which had been activated on December 18, 1940, as one of the four original preWorld War II numbered air forces with a mission of air defense of the southwestern U.S. and lower Midwest regions. After World War II began, its primary mission became the organization and training of combat units prior to their deployment to overseas combat air forces.

Original plans for the air base were to train B-25 bomber pilots for the war effort, but those plans were scrapped in December of 1942 when it was discovered that the runways and taxi strips were not strong enough to support the massive weight of the heavy bombers. Instead, the new air base was used for the training of service groups to support the Army Air force activities overseas with little emphasis on flying.

When it became apparent that the field was being wasted as an air service command, and aircraft maintenance instruction was the only aircraft-specific program underway, the field was trans-

ferred to the Fourth Air Force in September of 1943.

Thirteen enlisted men completed the military aspect of running the base, and the 45 civil service employees included five stenographers, with the remaining 40 being used for the base’s repair and maintenance needs.

Along with the Fourth Air Force came the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, appropriately named by the Germans as “the forked-tailed devil,” and by the Japanese as “two planes with one pilot.”

Had it not been for the arrival of the P-38 Lighting, one of the premier aircraft of World War II, the Santa Maria Air Field would prob-

ably have had a lackluster history.

The P-38, a World War II-era American piston-engine fighter aircraft developed by Lockheed for the U.S. Army Air Corps, was the preferred aircraft of American’s top aces. It could do anything!

Some of its uses were for interception, dive-bombing, ground attack, night fighting and evacuation missions. It had distinctive twin booms, and a central nacelle containing a cockpit and armament.

The P-38 was the only American fighter aircraft in large-scale production throughout American involvement in the war that began with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945.

At the end of the war, orders for 1,887 more P-38 Lightnings were canceled.

From late 1943 to Sept. 2, 1945, when World War II officially ended, 633 new P-38 pilots had graduated from training at the Santa Maria Army Air Field.

Shirley Contreras lives in Orcutt and writes for the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society. She can be contacted at 623-8193 or at shirleycontreras2@yahoo.com. Her book, “The Good Years,” a selection of stories she’s written for the Santa Maria Times since 1991, is on sale at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society, 616 S. Broadway.

HEART OF THE VALLEY

S2 | Friday, September 21, 2018

IMPORTANT HISTORY DATES IN SEPTEMBER

SANTA MARIA TIMES

Whiskey Row: This was a man’s world

‌T SHIRLEY CONTRERAS, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

Folks enjoy Santa Maria’s centennial celebration at City Hall in September 2005. ‌Sept. 17, 1804: Mission Santa Inez was founded.

Sept. 12, 1840: Gov. Juan Bautista Alvarado granted the 8,841.21 acres Casmalia Rancho to Antonio Olivera.

Sept. 21, 1874: The Guadalupe Lodge #237 F & AM first met as a chartered lodge.

September 1883: A raging fire destroyed the T.A. Jones & Son store. Other stores and offices suffered damages, including Judge Thornburgh’s office.

September 1894: Students moved into the new high school building built on 10 acres of property purchased from Ezra Morrison for $1,500. The building cost the district $12,000.

September 1897: Union Sugar Company acquired land on which to build a refinery. The company incorporated on Sept.

27.

Sept. 20, 1899: Union Sugar Company began sugar production in Betteravia.

Sept. 1, 1901: With $25,000, Valley Savings Bank opened on the corner of Broadway and Main Street. William H. Rice served as president. The property was later the site of Security First National Bank.

Sept. 12, 1905: Santa Maria voted to incorporate as a “Municipal Corporation of the Sixth Class,” with 202 voting for incorporation and 139 against.

Sept. 18, 1905: The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors confirmed the incorporation of the city of Santa Maria.

Sept. 21, 1905: The first meeting of the new Santa Maria board of trustees (now the City Council) was held in the director’s room of the First National Bank of Santa Maria, which was located on the northwest corner of Lincoln and Main streets. Alvin Cox was elected president and Thomas Preisker became the city’s attorney. Note: It wasn’t until 1927 that the title mayor came into use by an act of the state Legislature, which resulted in Arthur Fugler becoming the first legally designated mayor of the city.

Sept. 23, 1905: The cornerstone was set down at the new Hesperian Lodge #264 F & AM home at the corner of Church Street and Broadway.

Sept. 8, 1923: One of the worst disasters in the history of the U.S. Navy took place when seven U. S. Navy destroyers ran aground at Honda Point, off what is now Vandenberg Air Force Base. Twenty-three sailors died.

September 1926: The 30-member Community Orchestra, under the direction of William E. Strowbridge, was organized in Santa Maria.

Sept. 16, 1929: The Reverend Yasuo Oshita, from Japan, was appointed as the first permanent pastor of the newly organized Japanese Union Church in Santa Maria, a position that he held until 1957.

Sept. 9, 1931: The War Memorial building was dedicated in Guadalupe.

September 1934: Santa Maria’s new City Hall, designed by Louis N. Crawford and Francis Parsons, was dedicated.

Sept. 17, 1939: Hancock College of Aeronautics was dedicated to the “future security of the U.S.A.” Sept. 1, 1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, a law that resulted in the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.

Sept. 11, 1941: Ground was broken for the 92,000-acre Camp Cooke military installation.

Sept. 9, 1942: The first civilian employees were transferred from Camp Cooke to the Hancock College of Aeronautics.

Sept. 16, 1943: After bombers were determined to be too heavy for runways, the Army Airfield became the final training site for P-38 Lightning fighter groups.

Sept. 2, 1945: Japan formally surrendered.

Sept. 2, 1945: Hancock leased its school facilities to USC for $1 a year. A four-year degree course was offered by the university through the Allan Hancock Foundation.

Sept. 5, 1945: Rev. Yasuo Oshita, minister of the Japanese

Union Church on Mary Street, became the first Japanese to return home from the internment camps.

Sept. 10, 1945: A peacetime workweek was established at the Hancock College of Aeronautics: 40 hours per week for civilians and 44 hours per week for military personnel.

Sept. 22, 1945: Although the local war price and rationing board closed, the rationing of tires, shoes and food (including sugar) was still in force.

Sept. 2, 1951: The new Blochman School was opened in Sisquoc.

Sept. 7, 1955: Santa Maria Historical Society organized and incorporated as a nonprofit organization, with Ethel-May Dorsey serving as its first president.

More than 200 people signed as charter members.

Sept. 10, 1955: The first location of the Santa Maria Valley Historical Museum opened in the basement of the Carnegie Library. The museum was to know two other locations before moving into its current location at 616 South Broadway.

Sept. 11, 1955: A time capsule was buried in the patio of City Hall to commemorate the last day of the eight-day Santa Maria 50th year anniversary,.

Sept. 7, 1961: Flames swept through the kitchen of El Camino School causing an estimated $5,000 in damages. Cause of the fire was undetermined.

Sept. 17, 1961: Rice School was dedicated to William Hickman Rice.

Sept. 24, 1961: The Arellanes School was dedicated to Don Juan Bautista Arellanes.

Sept. 28, 1962: A ribbon-cutting opened the new freeway.

September 1963: Santa Maria Beautiful chose the geranium as the city’s flower.

Sept. 23, 1965: Demolition of the Main Street School took place.

Sept. 16, 1969: Santa Maria City councilmen approved the first reading of an ordinance to establish regulations and procedures for the removal of overhead utility facilities and the installation of underground facilities.

Sept. 12, 1974: The new Masonic Temple, at 700 Lakeview Drive, was dedicated.

Sept. 20, 1974: The Santa Maria Valley Historical Museum, located at 616 S. Broadway, was dedicated.

Sept. 27, 1974: Fairlawn School was dedicated to Benjamin Wiley.

Sept. 12, 1975: The new Masonic Temple at 700 Lakeview Drive was dedicated.

September 1978: Rancho Tinaquaic received a 100 years certificate from the state of California.

Sept. 19, 1982: The site of Pacific Coast Railway Depot, located at West Main and Depot streets, was designated as a City of Santa Maria Landmark.

Sept. 12, 1985: Santa Maria’s City Hall, located at 110 East Cook St., was designated as a City of Santa Maria Landmark.

Sept. 12, 1989: Robin Ventura, 1985 Righetti High School graduate, played his first game with the Chicago White Sox. Sept. 19, 1998: More than 60 people gathered in front of the Santa Maria Inn on South Broadway to rededicate the El Camino bell.

Sept. 21, 2000: Vons, the first supermarket in Nipomo, opened.

Sept. 4, 2002: The new Nipomo High School marked its opening day.

Sept. 4, 2002: The time capsule, buried in 1955, was unearthed in front of City Hall.

Sept. 12, 2004: The yearlong celebration of Santa Maria’s centennial began with a community kick-off picnic at the Elks Lodge.

Sept. 11, 2005: Santa Maria’s centennial celebration closing ceremonies and a spectacular fireworks show took place at the Fairpark.

Sept. 12, 2005: Santa Maria celebrated 100 years of incorporation.

Sept. 29, 2009: The state of California filed a resolution designating October as Filipino/ American History month. Congress followed suit the following year.

he card rooms and saloons that once lined the north side of the 100 block of East Main Street are long gone, but there are still those who will never forget Whiskey Row as a thorn in the sides of those who vigorously campaigned against it.

Whiskey Row was a man’s world and from the beginning, like most newly formed Western towns, Santa Maria had its wet and dry factions.

For as long as anyone could remember, the saloons served as social clubs where men could go to have a drink or two, play friendly card games and talk politics. Local saloons could pretty much run their businesses without any interference, and the wets wanted to keep it that way. They just didn’t want anyone rocking the boat.

When the fire of 1884 demolished several saloons on The Row, the owners lost no time in rebuilding.

The two factions met on hostile ground when the question of incorporation was placed on the ballot in 1895. The dry faction did have a point. With county government and its men of the law mostly confined to Santa Barbara, local barkeepers could pretty much run their businesses without any interference.

Campaigning was vigorous but the wets proved to be shrewd. In scattering handbills throughout the town warning of the higher taxes that always went hand in hand with incorporation, they hit the townspeople where it hurts — in their pocketbooks.

To prove their point, they warned that incorporation would not only mean higher taxes but sidewalks would have to be installed and the streets paved. Who would have to pay for all of this?

The property owners, of course!

After all of the votes were counted, the bill went to have gone down to defeat 100 to 90.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/ SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY‌

Patrons of the Oil Exchange gather in front of the Whiskey Row bar in Santa Maria in an undated photo. Several drinking establishments were located in the four-corners section of downtown, which spanned across the first block of East Main Street.

However, the handwriting was on the wall. It would only be a matter of time when their little town would become a city.

Incorporation came up again for a vote on Sept. 18, 1905, and this time the wets lost by a vote of 202 to 139. Thus, the city of Santa Maria was incorporated as a “Municipal Corporation of the Sixth Class, under the name and style of the ‘City of Santa Maria.’”

Members of the board of trustees (now the City Council) included Samuel Fleisher, Emmett Bryant, Reuben Hart, A.W. Cox and William Mead.

The first meeting of the board took place Sept. 21 in the First National Bank, where Cox was elected president and Thomas Preisker was elected city attorney.

The first city ordinance imposed a $75 municipal license on saloons, payable every three months. In addition, if the owners were found guilty of running

their saloons in a disorderly manner or the saloons became public nuisances their licenses would be revoked.

To the dismay of the WCTU and the city’s Improvement Club, people made their living there and those who liked that sort of life spent their time there.

While Whiskey Row remained a thorn in the sides of most of the townspeople, Santa Maria’s popularity grew by leaps and bounds and its prosperity became legendary. Some built more pretentious homes and some were able to send their children away to college.

Despite the city’s growing prosperity for more than 50 years, the City Council was faced with the problem of what to do with the blight on East Main Street called Whiskey Row. Finally, in 1959, both the council and Mayor Curtis Tunnell put their cards on the table. That block had to go!

Golden Dukes dominated the court

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anta Maria’s Golden Dukes originated during the mid1940s when Santa Maria’s population hovered around 11,000.

When the townspeople were looking for some type of recreation program, a small city basketball league was formed. In 1946, “Duke” Webster and Walter Cisney, both owners of local gas stations, got together and sponsored a basketball team and named it the Dukes, with Webster serving as the team’s first coach.

When the Dukes won the city’s basketball league championship in 1946 and 1947, it soon became obvious that the team had grown too strong for local competition.

With community backing, Webster traveled outside the area, looking for more competitive play and enlisted Lawrence “Hop” Findley as coach to guide the team on the court.

Findley had extensive experience in basketball, having lettered three years at USC, playing for the legendary football, basketball and baseball coach Sam Berry from 1932 to 1935. With Findley as captain, the team won the Pacific Coast Conference title in 1935.

After graduating from USC, Findley did some high school coaching until World War II, when he enlisted in the Navy and coached two basketball teams.

After the war ended, he took a football and basketball coaching position at Santa Barbara College from 1946 to 1951.

The Dukes played their first games at the old gym at Santa Maria High School, which accommodated about 200 fans. After representing Santa Maria well at a tournament organized with teams from Paso Robles to Santa Barbara in 1948, a basketball court in the fairgrounds exhibit building was installed with a seating capacity of 1,400.

The Dukes always played to a packed house. If a spectator wanted a seat, he got there about an hour before the scheduled game time or he’d be out of luck.

The El Camino Junior High School marching band, sponsored by the local Elks Club, always performed at half time.

Santa Maria basketball got another boost when a team called Fibber McGee and Molly from Hollywood played in a tournament here. After the second tournament, the Dukes were asked to join the new Western Amateur Basketball league.

In the first year, they tied for the

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

The Santa Maria Golden Dukes played five seasons in the National Industrial Basketball League during the 1950s, a time when the NIBL was in direct competition with the fledgling NBA. The team included, front row from left, Quentin Sims (24), Ken Milo (12), Joe White (13), Omer Meeker (21), Gus Rischer (11) and Bill Bertka (15) and, back row from left, team owner Duke Webster, Bob McCutcheon (23), Sherman Nearman (26), William Madison Stanford (25), Marv Bergstrom (27), Chuck Kuluska (22), Bob Schyman (14) and coach Lawrence “Hop” Findlay. title and went to the National AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) tournament in Denver, Colorado. The following year, as an independent, the Dukes, with another successful record, were invited back to the tournament.

As to the origin of the Dukes name, Webster pointed out that it had nothing to do with his nickname. Danny Brannigan, one of the original team members and a fan of the Duquesne University Dukes, suggested the name in their honor.

Jim Garrett, sports writer for the Santa Maria Times, later tabbed them the Golden Dukes because of their colors — red and gold.

After playing well in the two AAU tournaments, the Dukes were asked to join the powerful National Industrial Basketball League, and in 1951 became California’s member of the league.

The NIBL, made up of corporate sponsors throughout the country, featured outstanding college players of the day.

The Professional League Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League merged in 1949, to become what today is the National Basketball Association (NBA). At that time, the NBA was not paying much so players had to make a decision whether to play for the NBA or have a secure job with the corporate teams. Once television came into the picture, that all changed.

With many league teams vis-

iting Santa Maria, the city soon became known nationwide as the “biggest little sports town in the world.”

The Golden Dukes represented Santa Maria well and were well-received in every city. They also had a three-game winning streak against the Peoria Cats, who in 1952 had five players on the U.S. Olympic Gold Champion Basketball team in Helsinki, Finland.

A community-backed team, Duke Webster’s recruitment of players compared to the corporate-owned teams was limited.

At that time, the only jobs to offer prospective players were in the school system. It was a handicap, but it gave Santa Maria some of its finest educators.

The building of Wilson gym in 1954 was prompted by the standing room only crowd at the fairgrounds armory. Teams from up and down the state came to play here and marveled at the sense of community support and the hospitality they were given.

In 1953, the Golden Dukes board of directors included Bert Gill, Joe Hagerman, H.O. “Duke” Webster, Nick Ardantz, then-Mayor Glenn Seaman, Dale Walters, John Weldon, Ed Pryor and Russ Griffith.

The team physician was Dr. A.M. Beekler; publicist, Jim Garrett; and official timer, Leo Bookless.

Please see GOLDEN DUKES, Page S8

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SANTA MARIA TIMES

HEART OF THE VALLEY

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Auto Club opened Santa Maria branch in 1918 ‌W hen Deane Laughlin ushered the “auto age” into the Santa Maria Valley by driving his newly purchased Oldsmobile from San Francisco to Santa Maria in 1902, he created more excitement than the townspeople had ever known.

Although Laughlin was the first man in town to own a car, it wasn’t long before other movers and shakers followed suit.

Bob Easton purchased a Premier and Arthur Fugler bought a Mitchell. Not to be undone, Emmett Bryant soon showed up with a Stoddard-Dayton, while Arthur Smith pulled into town driving a single-cylinder Cadillac.

In 1909, Dick Wickenden created excitement in Foxen Canyon when he pulled up to his house driving a 1909 Cadillac.

The Maxwell and the Hupmobile later became oil field favorites.

Soon Santa Maria was holding an annual street race, drawing in such great local racing names as Huyck, Omer and, of course, Deane Laughlin. The speedway-converted streets of Broadway, Stowell, Nance (now Bradley) and Main Street were lined with bales of hay as the drivers tore up, down and around the streets until they’d completed 100 miles.

Winston Wickenden, who lived across the street from the high school and watched the spectacle from his front porch, recalled that as they sped by and were driving cars that they’d built themselves from stripped-down models, none of the cars had windshields.

Although many Santa Maria residents viewed the noisy and offensive fumes-filled race a necessary evil, since it brought in many tourists, it was tolerated.

In 1918, the Automobile Club of Southern California, founded on Dec. 1, 1900 in Los Angeles, opened its 15th branch office here in the Telephone building in downtown Santa Maria, where it remained until 1919 when it moved to 121 S. Broadway. In 1922, it moved to 310 N. Broadway and remained there until 1937, when it moved to 725 S. Broadway. In June of 1982, the Auto Club moved to its current

PHOTO COURTESY OF AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA‌

The Automobile Club of Southern California branch at 725 S. Broadway. location, at 2033 S. Broadway. where it remains today.

Both the 210 N. Broadway and 725 S. Broadway buildings are still standing.

According to the Auto Club records, one of the main reasons that Santa Maria was chosen as an early branch was its important location for “regional travelers.” Even before the branch was built, the Auto Club had placed an Information Bureau in Santa Maria to assist motorists traveling between Northern and Southern California.

The Auto Club was one of the nation’s first motor clubs dedicated to improving roads. Not only did it propose uniform traffic laws and improving overall driving conditions, it urged the state to take steps to eliminate the hodge-

podge of conflicting laws. In addition, since existing roads were being eaten up by heavy trucks, it strongly urged that steps be taken to make sure that truck weights had a limit.

Adding to the problem was the fact that most of the streets were not paved.

One of the first items on the agenda of G. Alan Hancock, an early member of the Auto Club who served as president from January 1907 through May 1909, was to institute proper traffic signing.

Auto Club board members personally charted roads and posted road signs before the club was able to hire employees for those tasks. After posting road signs throughout Santa Maria and Santa Barbara, the project, said to be the

finest in the nation, ended in 1915 when the California Department of Transportation assumed the responsibility.

In the 1920s, Hancock’s interest turned to Santa Maria when he bought the bankrupt Santa Maria Valley Railroad.

His extensive involvement with Santa Maria, lasting until his death in 1965, included establishing Rosemary Farms (where he built a home) and an aviation school that trained many pilots during World War II. That campus is today known as Hancock College.

Through the club’s efforts, the state began to take an interest in the construction and maintenance of the roads that were in dismal condition. Advocating paved roads when inadequate roads (if

any) existed, club members were known to raise funds for important roads by selling subscriptions as, although the state government officials felt that paved roads were a necessity, they didn’t necessarily want to pay for them.

When it became apparent that some contractors were doing inferior work with inferior materials, the club called for standards to be set and adhered to.

In addition to the club working with the state to make these necessary improvements, it continued to educate its members about their responsibilities as drivers of this “new toy.”

Today, the Auto Club has 84 branches throughout Southern California, including three in Santa Barbara County.

College of Aeronautics trained WWII pilots

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aptain G. Allan Hancock, one of the most affluent figures in the city’s history, was introduced to the Santa Maria Valley when he purchased the Santa Maria Valley Railroad for $75,000 at a bankruptcy sale in 1925.

In January of 1926, he purchased George Tunnell’s 80-acre ranch, where he built the Hancock Foundation College of Aeronautics two years later.

With Hancock serving as its sole owner, president and operator, the school opened Oct. 21, 1928, with five airplanes and a handful of student pilots registering for the 10-week class.

As more and more men became interested in learning to fly, the classrooms began to fill.

However, the world was in the throes of the Great Depression and there were more graduating flyers than there were jobs available.

Hancock closed his school in

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1934, with the assurance that he would open it again when cadets could be assured of making a living when they graduated.

Hancock’s aeronautics school reopened in 1938 and classes were once again scheduled.

In May of 1939, while war was looming war in Europe, Gen. Henry H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Corps, called a group of veteran flying school operators to Washington, D.C., and told them that all indications pointed to an all-out war in the near future.

The general confided in them that the Army had neither the time nor the money with which to build facilities to train pilots.

In short, the country was not prepared to cope with a war.

“We’ve got a job to do and do it fast!” he said.

Having presented the government’s case, Arnold appealed to the men to assume the responsibility of using their schools for an

all-important primary phase of aviation cadet training. He went on to say that he had no money to give them and had yet to go to Congress to ask for funds.

“I can promise you nothing. Are you with me?” he asked.

Hancock was one of the first to agree to Arnold’s proposition, and primary training began July 1, 1939, at his school in Santa Maria.

The Hancock Foundation College of Aeronautics officially became the First Army Air Forces Flying Training Detachment on Sept. 17, 1939, when the college was rededicated to the “future security of the United States of America.”

Since Hancock’s school had been in operation for more than 10 years, the Santa Maria Airport, also called Hancock Field, was already equipped with runways, hangars, shops and barracks.

Other buildings were put up as needed.

Four auxiliary flying fields were added, three of them two-way fields, but there were no paved runways.

The new school entered into a contract with both the Santa Maria Union High School and the Junior College, making them a part of the Cadet Ground School Training Program.

While Hancock’s school furnished the buildings and certain materials, the high school furnished instructors to teach the cadets airplane mechanics and engineering. Night classes in navigation and meteorology were started in 1941.

Using textbooks furnished by Randolph Field but with no outline of material to be stressed, the instructors, graduates of the flight instructor’s course at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas tried to cover all aspects of aviation during the short period of instruction. It was left to the

discretion of those instructors as to where the emphasis should be placed in each subject as well as to determine what items should be left out if they ran out of time.

This frustrating situation eventually created morale problems and resulted in the high turnover of personnel.

At the same time, morale problems arose among the students because of the large spread in education among the students. In the math class alone, men with master’s degrees were classmates of those who had little or no knowledge of the subject.

Deeming it necessary to turn out one good student rather than five weak ones, instructors didn’t handle their students with kid gloves, and not everyone made the grade.

Those who flunked out were returned to their prior duty stations for reclassification. Of the original Please see PILOTS, Page S16

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HEART OF THE VALLEY

SANTA MARIA TIMES

A Who’s Who in Santa Maria from 1931

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n 1931, when the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, the Santa Maria Times sent out a questionnaire to residents requesting information that could be compiled into a publication identifying the people who lived in town and their life stories. Although not all of the questionnaires were returned, those that did come back gave a bit of insight into some of the citizens living here at that time.

They included Virgil F. Alexander, who was born in Union, Oregon, in March of 1896 and educated in Oregon schools. He married Blanche Souza, of Santa Maria, in September of 1920.

Alexander, who was connected with the Midland Counties Public Service Corporation, also played baseball with the Setsuo Aratani’s baseball team, the Aratanis, of Guadalupe, which toured Japan in 1929. Known as the home run king, the team often referred to him as “Alec the Great.”

Errett Allen, who lived on South Lincoln Street, was born in Lafayette, Georgia, in November of 1879. After attending grammar and high schools in the Lafayette area, he received his higher education at Peabody College at Nashville, Tennessee, the University of Louisiana and the University of California. He and Bertha Laude were married in August of 1907 in Decatur, Alabama. He headed the science department at Santa Maria High School and Junior College, where he was serving as vice principal.

John Alfred Alexander Jr. was born in New York City in September of 1901 and married Gladys Mary Glenn, of Ventura, in June of 1924. In 1930 while heading the

Setsuo Aratani’s baseball team, the Aratanis, toured Japan in 1929.

Samuel Jefferson “Jeff” Jones and his wife, Viola, lived on Cypress Street.

Marshall N. Braden Post in Santa Maria, he was the youngest commander of an American Legion post in California. He was working as parts department manager with the Santa Maria Garage and living on West Lemon Street.

Rudolph Albert Bagdons, a descendant of Jose Rafael de Jesus and Maria de la Soledad (Cota) Castro, was born in March of 1893 in Tepusquet. After completing his education in the Santa Maria elementary and high schools, Bagdons served with the 40th Division Cavalry, 40th company, AEF. He was the proprietor of the Bagdons Transfer and Storage Company, a member of the Knights of Columbus, the American Legion and the VFW. Born in Hollister in July of 1893, Glenn E. Baker arrived in Santa Maria in 1908. He married Minnie H. Abeloe in Santa Maria in 1917.

ias, the I.O.O.F. and the B.P.O.E. He and his wife, Gertrude, lived on West Fesler Street.

Israel Martin Burola, son of Gumesindo and Maria Burola, was born near Guadalupe in June of 1882. He served as Manager with the Union Sugar Company in Betteravia from 1908 to 1920 while serving as postmaster at Betteravia. He was a member of the Guadalupe Masons and the Eastern Star. At the time of the survey, Burola was living with his wife, Jennie, on East Cypress Street.

Pioneer Arthur F. Fugler, son of Francis and Elizabeth Fugler, was born at Fugler’s Point in August of 1871. After attending Santa Maria public schools, Fugler graduated from Heald’s Business College in San Francisco. Formerly an accountant, Fugler was a proprietor a general merchandise store

PHOTOS COURTESY SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY‌

Minnie died during the influenza epidemic in January of 1919.

Baker wore many hats. He served as clerk, steam and gas engineer, motorcycle and auto mechanic, constable, traffic officer and sheriff’s deputy. He was widely known in peace officers’ circles and held the respect of the entire community from youngsters to adults. Baker lived at his home on North Curryer Street with his second wife, Emma.

Albert Francis Black, son of Patrick and Maria Black, was born at Huasna in April of 1879.

After completing his education at the Huasna grammar school and Heald’s Business College, Black arrived in Santa Maria in 1900, where he served on the City Council and was city marshal.

Known as “Pop,” Black operated Black’s Sweet Shoppe. He was a member of the Knights of Pyth-

and worked in real estate as well as insurance. He served as mayor of Santa Maria for eight years and was on the City Council for 16 years. He also served as deputy county assessor and state inheritance tax appraiser. Fugler lived with his wife, Dora (Ables), on South Lincoln Street.

Samuel Jefferson “Jeff” Jones was born in Indianola, Iowa, in July of 1853, and was one of the earliest settlers in the Santa Maria Valley. He came here in September of 1871 by wagon with his father, Thomas Allen Jones, stepmother and his half-sister, Emma. In October of 1876, Jones and Viola Cook, daughter of R.D. Cook (who helped lay out the town site of Central City) were married by Madison Thornburgh, justice of the peace.

Jones and his father ran a carpenter shop on South Broadway and made furniture, cabinets and coffins. After a disastrous fire in September of 1883, the father and son built the town’s first brick building the following December on Broadway. The second story of the building became the lodge room of the Masonic Lodge, a reading room for W.C.T.U. and Thornburgh’s office. After 1884, it also served as office for the Santa Maria Times.

Samuel Jones was the owner of the Olive Hill ranch east of Orcutt and was a fruit grower for 30 years. At the time of the survey, he and his wife, Viola, lived on East Cypress Street.

These names, some familiar and some not, represent some of those who, in their own way, contributed to the growth of the valley and were proud to call it their home.

Celebrating a rich local Filipino history ‌T

hough some Luzon Indians were among those who were part of invading troops that were aboard the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Esperanza and took possession of Morro Bay in 1587 in the name of Spain, two days later the men returned to their ship and sailed away.

The more recent history of the Filipinos in California goes back to the early 1920s when farmers in Hawaii and California recruited 50,000 Filipino laborers (then considered to be United States nationals) to replace the Japanese, who had formerly worked in the fields. Although offered free education, most of the Filipinos couldn’t take advantage of this benefit until those who had sponsored them released them from their contracts.

The Philippine Islands was a territory of the U.S., but Filipinos in California couldn’t vote or own real estate or businesses.

Although they were forbidden to marry white women, some intermarried with other nationalities. Those who did marry white women left the state in order to do so.

When the Filipino migrant workers of the Great Depression days of the early 1930s followed the crops throughout California, many came to Guadalupe and Santa Maria, where the single men who were able to find jobs lived in bunkhouses provided by the growers. Those with families who wanted their children to have stability and a good education, worked the land, sometimes for $1 a day, and lived in small houses on the property. However, after one of the houses burned down in 1969, the county filed suit for condemnation and tore them all down.

When World War II broke out in 1941, President Roosevelt placed the entire Philippine military under American control. Later, two Filipino Army regiments were formed.

Those who left the farms to enlist included Santa Maria Valley’s Henry and “Bully” Abadajos, Felix Oliva, Arthur Campaomor, Frank Paduganan and many others. Cardy Oliva, Felix’s brother, served in the Merchant Merinos.

After the war, many of the former members of the Filipino regiments came to live in the valley.

Another wave of Filipino immigration came in 1946, when 60,000 who had fought with the U.S. forces in WWII were allowed to come to America.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, when America again opened its doors to Asian immigrants, the professional, highly-educated Filipi-

LEN WOOD, STAFF‌

Santa Maria Union High School’s first graduates — Zora DeWitt, left, George Merritt, Kenneth Adam and Ruth Libbey — are shown on a mural in the school’s entry with an old yearbook. The mural was painted by teacher Eric Farnsworth.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROSALIE MARQUEZ‌

The F.C.B.A. Market in Guadalupe in late 1940s and early ‘50s.

Filipinos working in the tomato fields in Santa Maria in the 1930s. nos came. The next wave came in 1994, when Filipino veterans of WWII were granted U.S. citizenship.

The early Filipino pioneers who had overcome hardships and discrimination, smoothed the path for the newcomers. They helped create unions up and down the West Coast, with some of them working as organizers long before the United Farm Workers began their campaigns.

Many Filipinos made their mark in valley.

Connie Abella, who arrived in the late 1930s, was a noted fashion designer. Ted La Bastida, a prominent member of the local Filipino community, came to the valley in 1928 and operated a farm near Blosser Road. The F.C.B.A. Market, run by Geronimo Arca, served the people in Guadalupe for many years.

Filipinos have also held responsible positions in local government. From the time these first immigrants arrived here, valley, they worked hard to support their families and to encourage their children to seek a better life through education. Today,

those children are included in the list of Santa Maria’s doctors, engineers, accountants, attorneys, educators and other professional positions.

In addition to encouraging their children to seek further education, the immigrants stressed responsibility for their fellow man, as well as a high degree of respect for the U.S. On Oct. 21, 1995, to commemorate the landing of the Spanish galleon in Morro Bay in 1587, the Filipino American National Historical Society placed a marker on the spot where it landed.

On Sept. 25, 2009, the state of California filed a resolution designating the month of October of that year and every October thereafter as Filipino American History Month “as a significant time to study the advancement of Filipino-Americans in the history of California and the United States, as a favorable time of celebration, remembrance, reflection, and motivation, and as a relevant time to renew more efforts toward research, examination and promulgation of Filipino- Americans.”

School graduates first class in 1894 I‌ n the spring of 1894, the Santa Maria Union High School’s first graduation took place when four seniors — Zora DeWitt, George Merritt, Kenneth Adam and Ruth Libbey — received their diplomas.

As the population grew, so did the enrollment. Twenty three years later, the school awarded diplomas to 23 graduating members of the class of 1917.

According to the 1917 high school Review, six of the 16 graduates of 1916 were already pursuing careers in teaching and attending State Normal schools, while Helen Otis was enrolled in the San Francisco Arts School. Elma Branch was enrolled in nurses training at Sister’s Hospital in Los Angeles and Chester Gibbs was a student at Stanford. The remaining graduates were mostly farmers.

Interest in debating took hold when the semester began in September of 1916 and a debating society was organized with Clifford Davis, a junior, as president.

In November, the school sent one of its teams to Arroyo Grande to debate a team from California Polytechnic School in San Luis Obispo. The subject was “Resolved that Direct Primary should be abolished in California.” Although Allen Patterson and Hubert Jordan came out with flying colors, the two others didn’t do as well.

The school’s sports endeavors fared better.

The boys’ basketball team held its first game in October of 1916 and gave Santa Ynez a trimming by beating them by a score of 61-2.

However, the tables were turned for the Santa Maria boys on the following Oct. 21 when the Arroyo Grande team beat them by a score of 23-22. The next five games were sort of toss-ups with the home team winning three games and losing two.

Members of the boys’ basketball team included Samuel Collins, captain, Clifford Davis, Claude Peavy, Tilden Righetti, Dewey Tunnell and Dean Twitchell.

A meeting of all boys interested in track and baseball was held Jan. 10, 1917, when Clifford Davis was elected captain of the track team and Tilden Righetti took over the school’s baseball nine.

Although track practice began almost immediately, not much interest in the sport was shown until about two weeks before the interclass track meet was scheduled to be held.

On March 17 at California Polytechnic School grounds and with eight schools competing, Santa Maria’s track team took second place and several records were broken during one of the fastest meets ever held in this part of the country. Ventura High School took first place.

Santa Maria’s team — Cox, Collins, Toy, Peavy and Davis — took second place in the relay race.

However, when the Ventura team was disqualified, the first place award went to Santa Maria.

Those who competed in track, with C.M. Rogers as coach, were Dudley Brady, Samuel Collins, Stacy Cox, Clifford Davis, Leo Donovan, Samuel Paulson, Claude Peavy, Tilden Righetti, Harry Siler, Carl Toy and Sylvester Zanetti.

With only Tilden Righetti, Carl Toy, Neal Glines and Claude Peavy remaining from the 1916 baseball team, prospects didn’t look good for the upcoming baseball season.

However, in practice (held every noon hour) both coach Rogers and captain Righetti were able to develop new material, resulting in prospects looking pretty good.

With The Review raving about the crowds that came out to see Please see GRADUATES, Page S8

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HEART OF THE VALLEY

SANTA MARIA TIMES

Friday, September 21, 2018 | S5

Sisters’ Hospital opens in May 1940

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n Nov. 15, 1938, an article appearing in the Santa Maria Times announced that the Catholic Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Charity were going to erect a “hospital of adequate accommodations” in Santa Maria. Since the city was in need of a hospital, which was recognized by doctors and laymen alike, the city united with the Rev. Father Murphy to ensure that the hospital would become a reality.

Although sectarian in its administration, the hospital, like all Catholic hospitals, was intended to relieve human suffering regardless of race, creed or color.

A fundraising campaign for the new 35-bed hospital was launched March 3, 1939, with the goal set at $50,000.

With the population of Santa Maria being about 8,000 at the time, this was a huge undertaking.

A citizens committee, headed

by Mayor Marion Rice, served as an executive board for the campaign, with Ross McCabe as secretary. D.F. Duster was appointed to head the drive.

On Aug. 3 of the same year, the general contract was awarded to the J.V. McNeil Company, of Los Angeles, and ground was broken Nov. 22 for the construction of the 35-bed, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital, a hospital better known as “Sisters’ Hospital.”

By awarding most of the subcontracts to Santa Maria companies and hiring 95 percent of the workmen locally, it became a community project.

On May 29, 1940, Santa Marians turned out to attend the formal opening of the $267,000 hospital, a concrete earthquake-resistant and fireproof construction.

Eight Sisters of St. Francis and Penance were assigned to manage and staff the hospital so urgently needed by the growing community.

In July of 1942, Sisters’ Hospital was awarded final approval for membership in the Associated Hospital Service of Southern California, the Blue Cross plan.

During the following years, the hospital was approved as a Class A Hospital by the American College of Surgeons and became a member of the American Hospital Association, the Southern California Hospital Association and the Catholic Hospital Association.

Mother Noella Dieringer was the hospital’s first administrator.

During its first year, Sisters’ Hospital treated 1030 patients and de-

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

Ground was broken for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital, more commonly known as Sisters’ Hospital, on Nov. 22, 1939. Sisters’ Hospital is now Marian Residence.

SHIRLELY CONTRERAS, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

On March 31, 1939, a kickoff dinner to help raise funds for the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital was held in the social hall of the Methodist Church. The hospital opened in May of 1940. The building became Marian Residence in 1967 when the new Marian Hospital opened. livered 106 babies. In 1943, over 1,000 babies were born there.

During its early years in operation, patients often paid for their care with vegetables and meat, thus creating serious financial problems for the hospital. The story goes that the Sisters called in an accountant, who diagnosed the facility as being bankrupt.

This reportedly didn’t set well with Mother Noella, who then told the accountant, “This hospital is God’s work and God is never bankrupt.” It must have worked as the hospital continued serving the people in the area until a new hospital was built.

During World War II, the opening of Camp Cooke created a pressing need for many more hospital beds as well as doctors and nurses. In addition, more babies were being born at the hospital creating an all-time high birth rate. However, when the war ended and Camp Cooke closed, the hospital returned to its normal peacetime existence.

In 1947, Capt. and Mrs. G. Allan Hancock donated both deep and superficial X-ray therapy machines, which put the hospital on an even par with the largest and best-equipped hospitals in the country.

Because some of the anesthetics used in surgery and maternity were explosive, it was necessary in 1951 to install an exhaust system in surgery and delivery rooms in order that anesthesia could be given with the greatest assurance of safety.

During the same year, a large parking lot was built on the property.

As always, when particular needs presented themselves, members of the community came forth with donations to meet the hospital’s needs, thereby winning the endorsement of Johns Hopkins Hospital and many leading specialists.

After a violent storm hit Santa Maria in 1952, cutting off the power at the hospital, two emergency operations were performed and several babies were delivered using improvised lighting. As a result of this power outage, the Hancocks donated two generators, thus providing adequate light throughout the building should emergencies of this nature take place again.

The many out-of-town visitors who came to the hospital often voiced surprise to see such a large, well-staffed, fully

equipped hospital in such a small community.

However, it became obvious that Santa Maria’s days of being a small town were quickly coming to an end and a new and larger hospital was seriously needed.

In 1965, the Sisters broke ground for a new hospital facility on 10 acres of land donated by the Hancocks. The new four-story, 125-bed Marian Hospital, located at 1400 E. Church St., opened in 1967.

In 1985, Marian Hospital opened the first Kidney Dialysis Center on the Central Coast and two years later, Marian Hospital became Marian Medical Center.

In 1997, the Marian Oncology Program began and Marian Medical Center merged with Catholic Health Care West.

In 2002, Marian Medical Center officially became part of Dignity Health and became Marian Regional Medical Center.

The building that once housed the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital at 124 S. Airport Ave. (now South College Avenue) is now the site of a residence for the Sisters on the right, while the left side of the building is being used by medical care businesses.

Tracing history of Rise and fall of the Santa Maria Club ‌ Genealogy Society R L‌

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ooking into family history has always been a popular pastime, but today, with the help of computers, the job is easier and can be done in a fraction of the time and cost.

There comes a time in most peoples’ lives when they become curious about their family’s history.

For many reasons, each person’s experience is unique. For most of us, myself included, we find that we have waited too long as the people that we could have asked have long-since passed away.

On July 1, 1968, members of the community who were struggling with putting together histories of their families got together and formed the Santa Maria Genealogy Society and Library, and dedicated it to the fostering of research in family history.

Thirty-one members of the community signed the charter.

Doug Glover was elected president and Gerri Weedman became vice president. Other officers included Gladys Munoz, Emily Heitz, Beatrice Richert, Linda Atkins, Leah Moore, Claudia Goodin, Linda Atkins, Ellen Weber and Margery Rinehold.

Other charter members included Mr. and Mrs. Jim Boyd, Colin Gardner, A.R. Godfrey, Teresa Graves, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hamilton, Joey Harris, Elliott Harrison, Esther Hollingshead, Bernece Hubbard, Mr. and Mrs. Roger Jabbs, Mr. and Mrs. Gunner Johnson, Huel Linley, Betty McKibben, Ted Moore, Mrs. Daniel Muns, Erlinda Ontiveros (author of the book, “San Ramon Chapel Pioneers and their California Heritage”), Marilyn Peverly, Eleanor Roberts, Mr. and Mrs. George Shook, May Smith, Retta Wood and Margery Zost.

The group’s first meetings were held at the First Methodist Church at Cook Street and Broadway.

Today, the Santa Maria Valley Genealogy Society works closely

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

Doug Glover was the first president of the Santa Maria Valley Genealogical Society. with the Santa Maria Historical Society and the Family History Center in helping people with all levels of experience in family research.

In addition, the local society has ties with the San Luis Obispo Genealogy Society and will co-sponsor an all-day DNA and Genealogy Seminar at the Santa Maria Library on Nov. 4.

Members of the society are generous in providing help to everyone who asks. In addition to helping how to find and use the resources in the library, they also show how to research on the major websites such as ancestry. com and familysearch.com, how to interpret records and more.

The Santa Maria Valley Genealogy Society is justified in being proud of the quarterlies that were once sent out to its members. It issued four bulletins a year for 35 years. Much of the information in these bulletins was included in Barbara Bruce Cole’s “California Central Coast Pioneer Families,” a book available for purchase through the society. Cole served as editor of the quarterlies from 1991 to 1999. Arlene Bates was the editor from 1981 through 1990.

Please see GENEALOGY, Page S8

obert Martin was 9 years old when he came with his family to the Central Coast in 1875. After a few moves, they wound up on a 50-acre ranch about nine miles south of Santa Maria.

When his father died in 1891, young Robert inherited the ranch to which he later added 80 more acres.

In 1889, Martin married Hattie Newlove, daughter of John Newlove, and moved to their new residence at 800 South Broadway in 1907.

The two-story, 11-room house, which was designed by Martin, was built by E.D. Bray on 2 acres of land. It was best described as being handsomely furnished and finished throughout with darkgrain Oregon pine.

On the main floor was a spacious drawing room, library, dining room, bedroom and bath, kitchen and a large hall, all warmed by two large Mission fireplaces. In addition to the five bedrooms upstairs, there was also a bath and trunk room. The yellowstone foundation and two large and impressive porches (each with a seven-step staircase), with one facing Broadway and the other facing south, added additional elegance to this mansion.

In 1919, after living in the house only 12 years, Martin sold the property to a group of Santa Maria businessmen who were looking for a clubhouse. The 117-member Santa Maria Club was incorporated in 1920 with E.D. Rubel installed as president on Aug. 19.

Ed Craig, one of the founders of the Santa Maria Club, built a large barbecue pit at the club upon its opening in 1920, thus introducing the tradition of the Santa Maria-style barbecue. This stag barbecue, which quickly became famous, was held religiously at the club on the second Wednesday of every month.

Some say that the secret of the three-inch prime top sirloin’s distinctive flavor was due to the fact that the meat was cooked over slightly green red oak logs that had burned until the coals were just

SHIRLEY CONTRERAS, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

The building at 800 South Broadway, now Landmark Square, bears only a slight resemblance to the house that Robert Martin built for his family so many years before. right, while others say that the key was in the simple seasoning of salt, garlic salt and pepper. Whatever the case, all roads seemed to lead to the Santa Maria Club on “barbecue night.”

In addition to serving a feast that would more than satisfy the tastes of every hungry diner, the club had a rule that the meal would be served to all of the guests at the same time. This, in itself, was quite a feat since the club was known to have served 725 people at its monthly stag barbecues.

Winston Wickenden, a member and stockholder of the Santa Maria Club, once told me that in addition to the good food served there, the building was then one of the most attractive in the area.

It’s difficult to determine when the Santa Maria Club’s famed barbecues began to decline, but the weekly bulletins of the early 1970s indicated a serious lack of patronage.

The monthly stag barbecue, which had fallen from the most talked-about event in Santa Maria during the 1940s through '60s became “just another dinner.”

Thursday’s Family Night Specials, formerly bringing in a sellout crowd, dropped to a mere trickle of from 20 to 60 people.

However, the expenses of operating the club didn’t stagnate.

The building needed to be repainted, major repairs needed to be made, equipment needed to be replaced and, in April of 1976, a major union wage hike went into effect.

With expenses going up and income going down, the club had to make some serious changes.

The fee to join the club went from $25 to $50, monthly dues were increased and, like the straw that broke the camel’s back, prices of the dinners had to be increased.

Not even a write-up in the national magazine Better Homes and Gardens helped.

Yes, inflation was crippling the club as it was becoming harder and harder to make ends meet.

In March of 1981, when the Santa Maria Club sold the building to A.J. Diani, a local contractor and businessman, the club meetings were held across the street at the Santa Maria Inn until the Santa Maria Club finally disbanded.

The building at 800 South Broadway, now Landmark Square, bears only a slight resemblance to the house that Robert Martin built for his family so many years before.

HEART OF THE VALLEY

S6 | Friday, September 21, 2018

SANTA MARIA TIMES

Elwin Mussell’s rise to Santa Maria mayor

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lwin Mussell was born in 1905 in North Dakota, but he grew up in South Dakota.

Although I couldn’t find any information about his father, his mother was a dressmaker and was the sole supporter of her five children. She put them all to work to prevent them from getting into trouble, she said.

To Elwin, each day was filled with work, work and more work.

He sold milk from his mother’s cow for 5 cents a bucket, raised flowers and sold bunches of pansies for 5 cents a bunch. One winter he made $900 by trapping muskrats. When school let out for the summer, his mother hired him out for $90 to anyone who’d have him.

Before reaching the age of 16, Elwin won the state of South Dakota’s magazine sales championship award by selling the most copies of the Saturday Evening Post and the Country Gentleman. As he later said, this was accomplished by ”selling them to drunks in the saloons.” With a bar on every corner and 12 on one of the streets, he had a ready-made market. As a reward for his efforts, he won a gold watch that never worked.

The boy was an avid reader and wasn’t above playing hooky to go down to the library to check out books. Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, books about mechanics ... anything. He wasn’t fussy.

Elwin was 16 years old when the Mussells left South Dakota and headed for California in a Dodge touring car, driving 2100 miles in 21 days on the mostly dirt covered pavement of the old Lincoln Highway. When the tires went flat, which they frequently did, they were patched. The only

serious problem they had was a broken axle, but in those days, with people helping people, they only had to sit in the car and wait for the next car to come along. In a few hours, they were back on the road heading west.

The Mussells first went to Ventura but must not have been impressed because it wasn’t long before they loaded up the car and came to Santa Maria.

When the family arrived in Santa Maria (population 3,750 at the time), Elwin went to work for the old Santa Maria Graphic Print Shop and after a year of training, he ran the place, earning $12 per week.

Although he was only 16, he never bothered to register for school feeling that it was his duty to help his mother to raise the family. But the real reason might have been that he liked being his own boss. He did, however, take various night school classes.

Elwin once sent away for a correspondence course, and when the package arrived, included was a book about psychology. He wound up tossing the course class papers out and keeping the book on psychology.

In 1925, he began publishing his own newspaper, The Santa Maria Advertiser, a free newspaper “Independent as a hog on ice” and published it every Thursday from the print shop at the corner of South Curryer and Orange. The publication, supported by advertising, also contained editorials.

Mussell published the Advertiser for 33 years before selling to the Santa Maria Times in 1958.

In 1928, Elwin married Barbara Higgins.

In his later years, when many

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

Elwin Mussell was a member of the Santa Maria Planning Commission and City Council before he became mayor in 1974. of the old-timers in Santa Maria would stop by to reminisce with him about his little free weekly newspaper. Some them were his 25 former carriers who never failed to pull from their pockets the silver dollar that he’d given them when they grew “too old” to work.

Through his little newspaper, Elwin Mussell can be credited with having a law passed regarding hospital care. In 1930, a man was seriously injured in an auto accident near the Wye, south of Santa Maria. He was taken to the county hospital in Santa Maria and was refused entrance until the nurse could determine who

was going to pay the bill. In the meantime, the man died. It was later determined that he was a very wealthy man.

The nurse at the hospital sued the Advertiser two times for $50,000 and after a week in court, the newspaper won. The end result was that patients would first be admitted to the hospital and questioned about the bill later.

And so it is today.

Mussell’s newspaper experience brought him to City Council meetings for more than 25 years as a reporter where he obtained firsthand the city government’s news.

Later on, when he ran for office, he could say that he was the only candidate who had taken an active part in the city’s government over a long period of years by attending the meetings and helping (through his newspaper) to guide the city’s progress according to the wishes of the majority of the people.

Mussell was an active member of the Chamber of Commerce for 36 years, serving as chairman of publicity and public relations for 20 of those years. In addition to welcoming the many clubs and lodges and groups to the city, he and Bob Seavers, the secretary-manager of the chamber, went out to Vandenberg Air Force Base every month for more than ten years, to tell the new airmen about the wonders of Santa Maria.

Noting that the Planning Commission was the best training ground for the City Council and eventually the mayor’s job, Elwin Mussell, an avid Democrat, served on the commission from 1960 to 1966, the City Council from 1966 to 1974 and served as mayor 1974 to 1980.

A few of the accomplishments as mayor included building a 232-unit high-rise at East Main and Broadway on land that had been vacant for almost three years. In addition, the nine-block area south of Main Street was cleared and the new Santa Maria Town Center was built with two large department stores and an air-conditioned mall of almost 80 specialized stores.

The police and central fire stations were remodeled at a cost of over $1 million. A third fire station was built at the north end of the city.

Preisker Park, Adam Park and the Minami Community Center were also built.

There were many more accomplishments made by Mussell during his terms in office, all of them to the benefit of the city.

Around 1944, he purchased 10 acres of land in Ruiz Canyon from attorney Fred Gobel. Additional land purchases adjoining this property increased Mussell’s total ownership to 574 acres. It was on this property that he created Mussell Fort.

Mussell began building his “fort” in the early 1950s and it became his own personal showcase. Although he traveled to 47 states, picking up such items as branding irons, brass knuckles, hand cuffs, a six-sided poker table, many of treasures came from Santa Maria, items like the city’s first street lights.

On May 11, 1980, on his way home from his “fort,” Mussell died in a car accident. His wife, Barbara, who suffered from an extended illness, died 11 days later.

Both are buried in Mussell Fort.

A community effort to build a school in the Valley ‌A community effort to build a school in the Valley Almost 147 years have ‌ passed since Benjamin Wiley first stepped foot in the desolate wasteland now known as Santa Maria and took up a piece of Homestead property that was then being offered by the government to anyone who satisfied its requirements.

In October 1868, when Joel Miller stopped by on his way to Santa Barbara, and met Wiley, Wiley offered him his choice of the four quarters of his section if he’d stay. Miller accepted.

Within a year, 100 people were living here, with more making plans to come. Although the area was desolate, the ground was covered with red spiders, and the wind blew incessantly, the pioneers persevered. Battles said in one of the columns that he wrote for the Santa Maria Daily Times, “they had staying qualities.”

With no buildings in which to live, some of the pioneers stayed at the old adobe over in Guadalupe, while others lived in their wagons until lumber became available for them to put up living quarters.

The hardships that they suffered were legendary, but they never stopped trying to build lives for their families.

With most of them realizing the advantage of education, they began to take steps to organize a school, thus making it a community effort. George Washington Battles was delegated to begin whatever work was necessary to form a district and build a school.

Battles, who had more education than most of the settlers, framed a petition and circulated it among the settlers, all of whom signed.

The group received a setback when the petition was presented to the school authorities in Santa Barbara, and it was rejected. Before a district could be recognized and accepted as a district, the residents would have to build its own school and pay a teacher for one year. Then, and only then, would it be recognized as a district and be eligible to receive county aid and receive public money.

Although disappointed, the pioneers, being undaunted, outlined the entire Santa Ynez Valley as the school district and began taking up subscriptions to raise funds to build a schoolhouse.

In October 1869, a fundraising “festival” was held in the partially completed house of Rudolph Cook, the only building that was big enough to hold the many people expected to participate. For a nominal fee, the people enjoyed dancing, guessing games, grab bags and a banquet. When the receipts were counted, they had raised about $100. That amount, in addition to monies previously subscribed, was deemed to be sufficient to build a school house that would house its scholars for the time being.

Among the subscribers was F.Z. Branch of Arroyo Grande, who

SHIRLEY CONTRERAS/CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS‌

Pleasant Valley School.

Tina McEnroe teaching a class at Pleasant Valley School. made a donation merely to show his good will and appreciation of education.

When redwood lumber was ordered and brought in by boat to Mallagh Landing (sometimes called “Cave Landing”), volunteers drove their spring wagons out to the water’s edge to pick it up and cart it back to the settlement.

Since there were no roads worth mentioning, everyone made his own roads “wherever the going was best.”

When the lumber was delivered, Rudolph Cook, who was a carpenter by trade, took charge of building the schoolhouse on the 1-acre parcel of land that had been donated by Martin Luther Tunnell, property that is now part of Hancock College. With everyone in the Valley who could use a saw or hammer a nail turning out to help, the building (with the exception of a ceiling) was completed in about three days, and was ready to open in November 1869. The total cost of the building was $510.

Rudolph Cook, George Washington Battles and Joel Miller were

A photo of the memorial to Mrs. James Battles.

the school’s first trustees, with Battles also acting as chief of the board, a position that he filled for the next three years.

The school opened with Joel Miller taking the position of teacher. Although Miller was handicapped and could do no manual labor, he was a kindhearted old gentlemen, with a fair amount of education, and was willing to do his part in building the community. The district was named, “Santa Maria,” after the name of the Valley.

Opening with about 40 students, the school had no text books, so students brought whatever they could find at home.

Some were old books that their folks had brought from the old country, with one including a book written in a foreign language. Another student brought in the family Bible.

To learn his letters, Grant Battles used an old Wilson’s spelling book that had been brought across the plains in 1865 by an older sister.

With neither desks, black-

boards nor furniture, the students sat on bare benches that had been pushed up against the walls.

The first opening of the school was short-term and was closed for the Christmas holidays.

It opened again in 1870 with “Uncle Joel” Miller still in command.This time, though, the trustees were able to obtain regular textbooks recommended by the state of California. Each student had to furnish his (or her) own ink and used quills for pens.

He also had to furnish his own transportation, which was appropriately called, “the pedestrian bus line.”

When the 1870 school year closed, the school was recognized as a district by the county and was able to draw school funds for the coming term, which opened with blackboards installed, charts and maps secured to the walls, desks, plus a ceiling. The redwood desks, locally procured, were unvarnished, with each desk accommodating two students. The desks purchased in later years were exact copies of the originals, only

made of hardwood with a more complete finish.

With the acceptance of the school as a district, the students had to bid a farewell to their old friend and teacher, Joel “Uncle Joel” Miller as state regulations required that schools could hire only teachers who had passed examinations and held a teacher’s certificate.

A man by the name of Allsop, who had come from the East, took Miller’s place, but he only lasted a year.

The school opened in 1872 with the winsome and “lovable” Miss Charity Rixon from San Francisco, taking Allsop’s place. She opened the school every morning by reading a chapter from the Bible and had her students recite “The Lord’s Prayer.”

When the school reopened in 1873, a man by the name of “Graham,” another eastern teacher took over the school. His establishing a library was definitely a “red letter day” for the community as there was no reading material available, with the exception of a rare magazine. With mail being slow in delivery, the library was heralded as a treasure to the community.

During the next few years, with more and more families moving into the Valley, different sections of the district were cut out to form other districts, thus beginning the Laguna, Agricola district and Central districts.

In 1874, another 12 feet were added to the school, increasing the size to 43 feet long.

The school was eventually moved to a 1-acre strip of land that William Smith had donated for school purposes. The land was given with a proviso that it would revert to the heirs when it ceased to be used for school purposes.

Through the years the school was used for many purposes, and before the area had an official church, it was used for religious services.

The last teacher at the school was Mrs. James Battles, who taught there from 1930 to 1935, when the school closed.

The empty school was later used for storage, and for the housing of some of the field workers. Dr. Ikola eventually purchased the building and had it moved to a site on which he intended building a Heritage Park. However, his dreams were never realized, and the forlorn-looking school sat alongside Hwy. 101 for many years.

In September 2006, Paul and Tina McEnroe purchased the school from Dr. Ikola, moved it to its present site in Buellton and began the painstaking process of restoring the old relic.

The McEnroes, owners and operators of Rancho La Purisima, have dedicated themselves to maintaining the Pleasant Valley Schoolhouse so that the community can enjoy some of the historical education roots 00 1 of California.

SANTA MARIA TIMES

HEART OF THE VALLEY

Friday, September 21, 2018 | S7

Independent pioneers of the valley

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urrounded by Mexican land grants, our windswept sandy Santa Maria Valley and hilly areas were neglected until the government had them surveyed into townships and the land became open to homesteaders.

To claim property under the Homestead Act of 1862, the prospective homeowner (over the age of 21) needed to be either a citizen of the United States or plan to be, and he had to be head of the household.

Furthermore, the homesteader was required to improve the property by building a house and farm for a living.

After five years, he could obtain title to the property. However, ownership of property was no bed of roses, and the trials and tribulations of the homesteaders who settled in the area which eventually became Santa Maria are legendary.

Rudolph Cook’s house, the first in Santa Maria, stood on property that later became known as the south side of Main and McClelland streets, and one day home of the Gaiety Theater. The two-story structure, hardly pretentious, was built with lumber hauled from San Luis Obispo, had two rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs, and was finished in October 1869.

There were no fences in Santa Maria’s early days, as the ocean freight charges for shipping from San Francisco made the purchase of lumber prohibitive.

As a result of open lands, farmers were plagued by wild horses that swept over the Valley in vast herds that trampled or ate what crops the pioneers could grow in this vast wasteland. In hopes of salvaging their crops, the men dug ditches to a depth of about 2 or 3 feet deep into the grounds and created mounds of earth about 2 feet high and 2 feet wide, with a few sticks placed at the top as sort of a rudimentary fence. These ditches helped to turn back some of the invaders.

SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY‌

Residence and ranch of Isaac Miller in Central City is shown in this undated drawing.

The wild horses were small and wiry. Settlers got together and either shot the pests or ran them into corrals. One of the corrals was located about 10 miles southwest of the present Santa Maria. Another was located about 4 miles south of town. The corrals, 60 feet wide and circular in shape, held from 200 to 250 head. Some of the captured horses were sold to some people from out of town.

The last drive took place around 1875.

Grasshoppers were particu-

larly bad in the early 1870s when they bred and hatched in crevices on the hills of Rancho Suey, across the river from the Valley.

Not having wings for the first two days, they didn’t leave the vicinity of their hatching, but when their wings formed and grew, aided by the wind from the mountains and guided by instinct, they descended on the Valley in big clouds so thick that they obscured the sun and the day grew dark as night.

Pioneers were helpless as the millions of grasshoppers rolled

An elegant benefit ball in black and white goes on

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00 1

ounded in 1946 as a social club for a small group of young, married Hispanic women, the Mexican Ladies Social Club is probably best known for the elegant Black and White Ball that the members host each year in Santa Maria. This nonprofit organization is limited to 24 members, and the proceeds of the event benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Maria. To date, the amount donated has exceeded $200,000.

Prior to 1959, an annual semiformal dance, where formal dress attire was not required, was hosted by a young girls’ club called Club Alegria. When the club disbanded, its members contacted the ladies of MLSC to ask if they’d be interested in taking over the event. Although the members agreed to take on this gala event, changes were in store.

Instead of casual dress, they decided to pattern the dance after the Baile Blanco Y Negro (White and Black Dance) held each year at the Churubusco Country Club in Mexico City. Thus, the annual Santa Maria extravaganza became known as the Black and White Ball. Wanting to make this an elegant affair, the members decided that the dance should be an elegant and formal affair, opting for a dress code of floor-length gowns for women and tuxedos for men. The only colors permitted would be black or white or black and white. In addition, the 12-member bands were to come from cities such as Los Angeles or Fresno.

The spouses of MLSC members have assisted with many aspects involved in making it the success that it has become. In addition to doing the decorating, they have also painted walls, landscaped and created gardens, made waterfalls and even constructed bridges.

With the club spanning more than half a century, it’s not unusual for multiple generations of club members to be represented.

Eloise Ruiz, a charter member of the club, is its oldest member.

In years past, the ball has been held at the Santa Maria Fairgrounds, the Vandenberg Inn and Santa Maria’s Veterans’ Memorial Building.

The queen candidates (no less than five), ranging in ages from 16 to 18, must face local dignitaries, who ask the girls questions about

PHOTOS COURTESY SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY‌

The Mexican Ladies Social Club is probably best known for the elegant Black and White Ball that the members host each year in Santa Maria.

Jessie Razo Gonzales, left, was the first Black and White Ball queen in 1959.

With the club spanning more than half a century, it’s not unusual for multiple generations of club members to be represented.

Eloise Ruiz, a charter member of the club, is its oldest member. their interests and goals, all the present themselves. As one judge time keeping an eye on how they said, “These girls are fabulous!”

over them in a belt 10 miles wide.

Covering two to three miles per day, they cleaned out the country as they passed through. They kept going for 10 miles or more, finally stopping at the sand hills south and east and as far as Orcutt, where they seemed to peter out.

Although the horses and cattle needed to be protected, the chickens and turkeys feasted on hoppers all daylong. Even though the grasshopper infestation boosted egg production, the yolks were as red as blood.

Wheat and barley were the Valley’s first principal crops and flourished until unseasonable rains caused rust to destroy the wheat. Sand blown by successive winds cut off tender barley shoots close to the ground.

Although a few of the early settlers sold out and returned to their homes back East, most stayed and struggled to overcome these obstacles.

Such was the principle that governed the early independent pioneers of the Santa Maria Valley.

After war, Talaugon headed out into fields

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n July 27, 1953, after three years of fighting, the United States, People’s Republic of China, North Korea and South Korea agreed to an armistice, thereby bringing the Korean War to an end.

When the young men of Guadalupe, who had answered the country’s call to service, returned home, reality struck in the form of responsibilities, children to feed and rent to pay.

Joe Talaugon was a veteran and needed a job, but with no skills, his prospects didn’t look good.

“Go out to the lettuce fields in the morning and the Filipinos will teach you how to ‘dry pack’ lettuce,” he was told. Filipinos had dominated the labor in the fields of California since the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, and were noted to be the best in field labor at the time, so Talaugon had some good teachers to work with.

It was a crisp and foggy morning in the summer of that year when young Talaugon arrived in the fields, ready to do whatever was necessary to work with the lettuce.

A stocky man, whose name was Leo, smiled at him and spoke of him in Tagalog, “Sino ba yung Bata?” (Who is that boy?)

Leo immediately took Talaugon under his wing and proceeded to teach him the ropes.

Although he had the patience of Job as he bent over and showed him how to cut and trim lettuce, it was too hard for Talaugon to hold the lettuce with his stiff hand.

Talaugon struggled through the next two hours, which seemed like an eternity. His back was aching, his shoes were caked with mud, and his hands were sore and cracked. In addition to his having no gloves, he suffered and cursed his veteran buddies for keeping him out half the night.

Talaugon begrudgingly returned to the fields every day and was soon keeping up with the rest of the fieldworkers. It wasn’t long before he was walking out to the fields with that certain cockiness of the older Pinoys.

After a few years of working the dry pack circuit, Talaugon knew all of the Filipino crew bosses. Each one had his own crew of dry packers, but they all worked with each other at some point or another.

Talaugon never forgot some of the crew bosses, such as Leo Julian, Charley DeJesus, Ben

SHIRLEY CONTRERAS/CONTRIBUTED‌

Joe Talaugon addresses Valley Speaks in 2009.

Casunite, Sylvester Pili, Eddie San Diego, Fernando Javier, Mr. Ramos, Mr. Nogales, Mr. Dacanay, Larry Halili, Jerry San Juan and others. He also made many friends among those that he worked alongside of, such as Max Lavictoria, Ernie Gutierrez, Pop Nano, Mr. Elo, Aristan Julian, Mr. Calahan, Mr. Cortez, Danny Tesoro and so many others. They all worked together and learned the trade of dry packing lettuce.

Although the older guys teased and razzed the young guys, the young men gained a deep respect for their elders.

After work, all of the pool halls were alive and the streets of Guadalupe were full of Filipino lettuce workers. Their hard work in the fields paved the way for other immigrants to come and find a niche in the American society.

The days of the Filipino crew bosses going out to the lettuce fields have long gone. But where have they gone?

As we look back on the history of this Valley we see that each generation has brought another wave of immigrants from another country to come and dominate the grueling labor in the fields of the farmer. Today’s workers come from Mexico and South America to work the lettuce fields and other vegetable fields in order to put salads on our table. The cycle goes on.

Talaugon wrote: “As I remember those men who worked so hard, some working two jobs, to earn enough to send their children to school so that they would not end up in the fields.

Many others (including myself) learned good work ethics out in those fields so that whatever trade we went into, we knew the value of hard work. So there was a lesson learned by the generation that followed.

“Drive around and enjoy the scenery. Adios.”

S8 | Friday, September 21, 2018

HEART OF THE VALLEY

SANTA MARIA TIMES

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

The Hart House (later the Bradley Hotel) officially opened with a grand ball held at McMillan’s Hall on Aug. 1, 1888.

Santa Maria’s early days: Not for the weak of heart

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he normal peacefulness of the early-morning hours of Santa Maria in the late 1880s was disturbed by a pistol shot when a man stepped out of the shadows of the Hart House, aimed his pistol at Dover Rice and pulled the trigger. Instead of hitting Rice, the bullet went through a window of the Hart House dining room.

At a later inquest, Rice said that he had been headed home and riding his horse and buggy along the street at a slow trot when, not only did he see the man step from behind the shadows but, glancing to his left, he was astonished to see another man, wearing goggles, standing against the wheels of his buggy and holding a pistol “that was leveled at me. Since not a word was spoken, I thought that I was in the hands of robbers.

“Raising in my buggy, I struck the man with the gun with the light buggy whip I was holding, and as I struck he fired. I tell you I was scared. I was sure that I’d been shot.

“My horse shied and almost overturned the buggy,” Rice continued. “As I was driving home at full speed, fully expecting another bullet to be sent after me. I stopped in front of Jimmie Beattie’s to fasten a chain that had loosened, and regained my nerve. When I started out again, the sound of a hard ridden horse greeted my ear and in a few minutes the man, with the gun in his right hand, rode alongside my buggy.

“We rode thus to the railroad crossing, with not a word being spoken by either of us until we

reached the track. I stopped and told him that I was unarmed and if he was going to shoot, to do it. He asked me who I was, and I told him my name was Rice, and I was going home.” When the would-be assassin lowered his pistol, Rice thought that it’d be the end of him, but the man suddenly turned and rode away. Although Rice called out for him to stop, his plea fell on deaf ears as the man kept riding.

Night watchman Lunbeck, the only eye witness to the shooting, told a story similar to Rice’s.

The cause of the trouble turned out to be that a thief had stolen a horse and cart in Los Alamos and Constable Foxen took off after him. After arriving in Santa Maria, Foxen mistook Rice for the thief.

Although the reason that Foxen took a shot at Rice was something that he would have an opportunity to explain to a jury, Rice merely took offense at the man for using him as a target.

During those early days, Santa Maria was a small town, and with the “real protection” being as far away as Santa Barbara, people felt that sometimes they had to take things into their own hands. Thus, a vigilante group was formed. Although no one seems to know the names of the members, no one condemned them either.

When Michael Mulley, aka Tambo, came to town and opened the Delmonico, eyebrows were raised when fistfights became a common occurrence at the establishment, with Mulley always seeming to be in the middle of the

fracas. Justice Thornburgh, in trying to stem the problem by arresting and fining Mulley, increased the fines with each offense. Still, the problems increased until finally the vigilante committee, fed up with the man’s shenanigans, ordered him to get out of town within 24 hours or “face dire consequences.”

Tambo went into hiding the next day, but at night he went back to his same old tricks. In mocking the vigilantes, he lined up his cronies, armed them with broomsticks and had them march up and down the room.

The vigilantes, who were furious, entered the Delmonico at midnight, seized Tambo and brought him to the center of town where a supply of tar and feathers was waiting for him.

They stripped him and covered his body with a thick warm coat of tar before rolling his body in the feathers. After tying him to a eucalyptus pole, they carried him to the river.

When they reached the county line, Tambo was given his horse and warned to never come back unless he wanted to be stretched up by his neck. Thus, Michael Mulley became the first person in Santa Maria to be tarred and feathered.

By the 1890s, things hadn’t improved. Whiskey Row, a row of taverns along East Main Street, had been the bane of the city’s existence for about 10 years.

When Ed Crisswell opened the “Seventy Six” saloon on East Main Street, people were alarmed as the

man was a noted troublemaker. As expected, there were problems right from the start. When Crisswell started writing spurious remarks on the saloon’s blackboard about the town’s dressmaker and her fiance, the man complained to Doc Southard, the town’s constable.

Southard then went to the saloon, erased the remarks from the blackboard and admonished Crisswell to stop writing such trash. However, as soon as the constable left the tavern, Crisswell went back to the blackboard and started writing again. When Southard heard of the violation of a direct order, he went back to the tavern.

The two men met outside the building, angry words were exchanged and both drew their pistols. Three shots were fired, with Criswell firing first, striking Southard in the upper right chest.

Southard fired the next two shots, with the first one hitting Criswell and the second one missing its target completely.

Dr. Lucas was called, and Southard was carried next door to Rianda’s Grocery Store where he died three hours later.

Crisswell was taken to his bedroom, a lean-to located at the rear of the saloon, and to everyone’s surprise, he began to get well. As he recovered, much to the consternation of the townspeople, he insisted on getting up and walking about the yard. Whereas Southard had been a popular officer, Criswell’s tavern had long been a stench to the community.

Golden Dukes

for the Dukes, became a longtime Hancock College men’s basketball coach and athletic director.

Bob McCutcheon began coaching the basketball team at Santa Maria High School, where he coached the 1957 and the 1966 CIF championship teams.

Quentin Sims, “Mr. Basketball,” became both and educator and later principal at the Main Street School and Fesler Junior High School.

Omer Meeker taught at both the Orcutt Elementary school and Santa Maria High School.

Madison Stanford, at 6 feet 9

inches and the tallest member of the team, as well as Roy Irvin and Bill Atkinson, stayed in Santa Maria to work for Unocal.

Bill Bertka, who played guard for the Dukes, became coach and director of athletics at Hancock Junior College, where he compiled an 87 win and 14 loss record in his three seasons, from 1954 to 1957.

In 1968, he joined the Los Angeles Lakers organization as a scout, assistant coach and director of player personnel until 1974.

He rejoined the Lakers in 1981, where he continues today as director of scouting/basketball

consultant and assistant to the general manager. He’s the only person to have coached all of the Lakers greats, including Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and a host of others.

Santa Maria was proud of the Dukes and the progress that the team showed in its few years of existence. The example that they set for our youth and their future is priceless.

Many thanks to Eddie Navarro who generously provided me with information contained in his vast sports collection.

••• The annual senior play, “Anne of Old Salem,” took place at the Gaiety Theatre on May 25 with all of the school’s seniors participating in the production. Since there were not enough parts for everyone, a Colonial Minuet was given by Fern Iliff, Mary Niverth, Gladys Cotter, Careline Barton, Hazel Smith, Eleanor Bobo, Frances Looman and Petrea Parnell.

included Principal Nelson C. Smith, Vice Principal Errett Allen and teachers C.M. Rogers, Beatrice M. Maine, Cora L. Bryson, Mira R. Arms, Ormonde Paulding, Vera Hawkins and Frank M. Buzick.

Iliff, Katheryn Kellogg, Frances Looman, Margaret McKenzie, Mary Niverth, Helen Oakley, Allen Patterson, Eva Reiner, Mary Rutherford, Doris Sherman and Hazel Smith.

More than 100 years have passed since these graduates received their diplomas and all have gone to their great reward.

Still, though, the history they created constitutes another important chapter in the annals of Santa Maria Union High School.

From S2

Others giving outstanding aid included Ray Norris, Dr. August Mollith, Duane Anderson, Dale Walters, Don Neff, “Pop” Graham, Al McGuire.

The 1953-54 season was the last season that the Golden Dukes played with the NIBL. After the team folded, many of the players went into the field of education.

Ken Milo became Santa Maria Bonita School District superintendent.

Joe White, who played as guard

Graduates From S4

the boys' games, girls' sports, although not as flashy as the boys’, were just as popular.

The girls’ basketball team, with Beatrice Maine as coach, “made the school proud.” The players included Lucille Brown, Lucile Drumm, Edith Glines, Melba Locey, Valera McIntosh, Gertrude Oakley, Helen and Lois Oakley.

•••

Seniors who were ready to step out in the world included Edna Alcorn, Eleanor Bobo, Dudley Brady, Lucille Brown, Samuel Collins, Gladys Cotter, Marion Crandall, ••• Evaline and Laura Dana, Leo and The faculty at the high school Mary Donovan, Ben Drumm, Fern

About a week later, a group of rifle-toting vigilantes entered Criswell’s room and threw blankets over the heads of the posted guards before leading them out of the room. The next step was to tie Criswell’s hands, throw a rope over the rafter above the bed and knot the other end around his neck before swinging him off. Criswell is buried in an unmarked grave in the Santa Maria Cemetery.

Neither an arrest nor investigation took place, as the feeling seemed to be that Criswell “had gotten his just desserts.”

However, the coroner’s jury felt differently.

“Who the responsible parties are we know not, though we must say that it is with deep regret that we are called upon to chronicle an occurrence of this kind and sincerely hope that it may be the last time. It makes no difference how low, extremely mean and desperate a character (is) with which a community has to deal. If lynching is resorted to, it reflects severely upon the citizens, however sober, law-abiding and intelligent they may be.”

The Santa Barbara Morning Press more candidly reported that “the act seems to meet with general approval — there appears to be practically unanimous opinions in this community that the county is saved a heavy bill of costs and the sheriff an unpleasant job by the occurrence.”

Yes, life in the early days of Santa Maria wasn’t for the weak at heart.

Genealogy From S5

Mike Farris, longtime member and past president of the local Genealogy Society, is currently indexing the 140 bulletins, totaling more than 2,500 pages. When completed, every local name appearing will be identified as to the exact issues in which he or she can be found.

This index will be available at both the Genealogy Society and the Santa Maria Valley Historical Museum.

In conjunction with the Santa Maria library, a member of the Santa Maria Valley Genealogy Society is in the genealogy area of the library on Wednesdays from 1 to 3 p.m. to help people with their family histories.

Sandy Peterson, the current president of the Genealogy Society, reminded me that the society has a website that includes a calendar of upcoming events as well as general instructions on how to get started with your own genealogy. It also includes a membership 00 1 application form.

SANTA MARIA TIMES

HEART OF THE VALLEY

Friday, September 21, 2018 | S9

Encounters with grizzlies began in 1769 ‌T

he first recorded encounters with grizzlies by the Europeans took place on the famed Portola expedition in 1769, the first recorded exploration by land of the present-day state of California. One of the place names that include the Spanish word for bear “oso” is our own Oso Flaco (skinny bear) Lake, which traces its name back to that first expedition.

The early settlers in the Santa Maria Valley had more than their share of problems with these wild beasts that were killing their calves and colts and, in general, causing much fear to the Spanish settlers.

The typical rancho vaquero, who rode a horse as if he grew up on the animal’s back, roped horses and bears as easily as he could don his hat.

Even though roping grizzlies was considered to be a sport, it was dangerous and not recommended for the novice. Since a wounded grizzly fears nothing, the vaquero’s life often depended on his own expertise as well as the speed of the horse he rode.

When Americans began to settle in the area, bull and bear fights became sporting events that proved to be both horrifying and fascinating to the Americanos.

After a grizzly was captured by the vaqueros, it was hauled into camp to fight a vicious horse-goring snorting bull.

The resulting gory spectacle delighted the spectators who had come to make money on the battle of the beasts and the betting was high.

The bear, which had two of his paws tied, crouched as low as it could, sometimes even digging a hole beneath him so that he might bring the bull down to a position vulnerable to his teeth and claws.

In the meantime, the bull tried to get the bear up on his hind legs so that it could spear it with his horns.

The fight continued until one or both of the beasts were dead.

Later, when the West’s new financial capital in San Francisco opened, the money brokers adopted “bear” and “bull” investment language in that the “bear” speculator would hold off buying until prices fell to his hoped for

ASSOCIATED PRESS‌

A grizzly bear rests in a mud bog atop a bison carcass on May 12, 2016, at Blacktail Pond in Yellowstone National Park. The early settlers in the Santa Maria Valley had issues with the grizzlies, which killed many of their animals and, in general, caused much fear. advantage. On the other hand, the “bull” speculator would buy stock, confident that its price would continue to rise and increase in value.

These terms eventually found their way back to the American Stock Exchange.

However, grizzlies (urus horriblilis) were dangerous animals, and much feared by the early settlers.

One story that has made the rounds is of Benjamin Foxen having a bear chained to a tree in front of his adobe.

When the stagecoach came through, the passengers were fascinated by it. How the bear happened to be chained to the tree, or who released it and how, are questions no one seemed to know the

answer to.

Francis Branch, owner of the Arroyo Grande Rancho, was once infuriated by a grizzly that was killing both cows and calves near his ranch house.

One day, when another cow was attacked, he decided to tackle this problem head-on and get rid of the grizzly.

Since bears were known to return to the sight of a kill for one last meal, Branch dug a hole near the dead cow.

After filling the hole with brush and covering it with heavy timbers, he and a friend jumped down into this pit and waited with their rifles, ready to shoot this bothersome cattle killer when it returned.

After crouching in the pit for some hours, the men caught sight of an immense bear and her cub approaching the dead cow.

Carefully poking their guns through the concealed cover of the pit, the hunters fired shots, but instead of hitting the mother bear, they killed the cub.

The pitiful cries of the dying cub so enraged the mother that she ran in circles around her dead cub, looking up into the trees and tearing great chunks of bark and wood from them with her long claws and teeth, trying to destroy whatever it was that had killed her cub.

The two frightened men who were huddled in the pit didn’t dare make a noise. They spent the entire night and half of the

next day crouched in their narrow quarters hoping the bear wouldn’t find them.

When the bear finally went away, they made a dash for home.

Years later, when Branch was reminiscing, he said, “Right then and there was when I decided to always hunt bears above the ground. It’s safer.”

Because of the hunting and killing, bull and bear fights and poison-laced animal fat being left outside for the bears to eat, grizzlies became a rarity on the Central Coast in the 1870s.

Reportedly, the last reported grizzly bear was shot in 1922.

However, to this day, occasional reports of bears being sighted appear in the news.

Local pioneers buried in San Ramon Cemetery ‌J

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ust as our country has its own national cemetery to honor the memory of those who have gone before us, of no less importance are the local cemeteries — the San Ramon Chapel and the cemetery in Sisquoc, the final resting place of pioneers who created some of our earliest history.

By walking through the little burial grounds and reading the names of those who have been buried there, one can’t help but have a sense of wonder about the people who put down the cornerstone of our history.

My first visit to the San Ramon Cemetery wasn’t one of my most successful ventures.

While approaching the historic chapel on Foxen Canyon Road, the simple, but majestic little white church sitting off in the distance was silhouetted against the sky and seemed to be waiting for me.

As I drove up to the little hill, approaching the cemetery, I noted something coiled up in the middle of the road. There, waiting for me, was the biggest snake I ever saw.

With that, I made a hasty exit and didn’t go back for about two years.

When I did go return, and told the story of the snake encounter to the caretaker, he nodded his head and said that it was a king snake. He went on to say that I didn’t need to worry about king snakes as it “wasn’t the season.” Easy for him to say!

As I made my way across the burial grounds, carefully avoiding the many gopher holes and keeping an eye out for snakes, I tried to remember the history of the place as told to me by Winston Wickenden, a great grandson of Benjamin Foxen.

Benjamin Foxen was the area’s first settler, having acquired 8,874 acres of land known as the Rancho Tinaquaic on which he had built an adobe house for his family in 1837. Foxen later divided the property among his 11 children with daughter Ramona taking lot eleven, property located at the opposite end of her father’s adobe.

Legend says that when a friend asked Ramona why she had chosen that particular piece of property located so far away from everyone else, she replied that she wanted to “get as far away from the house as possible.”

In 1875, the year after Benjamin Foxen died, Fred Wickenden drove 5,000 sheep up to Redwood City and sold them for $1 each and

DONNA POLIZZI, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

The cemetery at Chapel San Ramon has many statues and interesting features.

LEN WOOD, STAFF‌

A cyclist climbs the hill to the San Ramon Chapel off Foxen Canyon Road during the Arthritis Foundation’s California Coast Classic Bicycle Ride in September 2017. used the money to purchase redwood lumber to not only add eight rooms to his house, but to build a church on property that he’d purchased from the government in 1872. In 1879, the church, the first Catholic Church located between the Santa Ines and San Luis Obispo missions, was dedicated as the San Ramon Chapel.

In 1876, the coffin with the remains of Benjamin Foxen was removed from its original site and reinterred in the San Ramon Cemetery.

The body of Foxen’s wife, Eduarda, who died in 1894, was first buried at the Mission Santa Inez and later moved to the San Ramon Cemetery, where she was buried beside her husband. In accordance with her wishes, Eduarda’s gravesite is unmarked.

As I walked through the cemetery and read the names from the grave markers, I could only mar-

vel at the strength of these early pioneers, and think of the many personal joys and sorrows as well as great historical events that they must have witnessed.

While they were creating lives for themselves here in California, what was going on in the rest of the country? Were they concerned, or were they simply too busy struggling to survive to care?

Or did they even know?

While walking back from Foxen’s gravesite and still gingerly avoiding the gopher holes and voicing dismay at the signs of vandalism, I saw the graves of Eduarda’s and Benjamin’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, some of whom had died at very early ages.

Like Wickenden, four of Guillermo’s children had died during an 1882 epidemic, all within 10 days of each other, but lie in unmarked graves.

DONNA POLIZZI, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

Take a scenic stroll past the San Ramon rose garden and take in the history of the area.

Matilde Foxen de Carteri, the last surviving child of Eduarda and Benjamin, died in 1923 at the age of 77.

I moved to a large stone, marking the final resting place of Juan Pacifico Ontiveros, another early settler and the patriarch of still another prominent family. He was born in 1795 and came into ownership in 1856 of the Rancho Tepusquet, property that had been granted to his father-in-law, Don Tomas Olivera, in the late 1830s.

Heirs of Olivera sold the property to Matthew Biggs and Domingo Davila in 1855. They, in turn, sold it to Ontiveros, who died in 1877.

Beside Ontiveros lies the body of his wife, Maria Martina del Carmen Osuna (sister to Eduarda

Foxen), who was born in 1809 and died in 1898.

Other prominent names in the historic cemetery included Ruiz, Calderon, Arellanes, Mendoza, Rivas, and, of course, the many descendants of Benjamin and Eduarda Foxen.

Miguel Ontiveros had died in France in 1918 from wounds suffered in World War I, and although his body was not brought home, a stone was placed in the cemetery to honor his memory.

I walked over to the little chapel and found that it was locked. I tried looking through the window, but couldn’t get a clear view of what was inside. So I headed back to my car hoping not to disturb any king snakes.

S10 | Friday, September 21, 2018

HEART OF THE VALLEY

SANTA MARIA TIMES

Adam opens first store in Central City ‌W

hen 8-year-old William C. Adam came to the Santa Maria Valley with his folks and four siblings in 1869, water, or the lack of it, was the principal topic of conversation.

Water is still a problem 149 years later.

The early settlers found the valley’s land new and fertile and immediately responsive to cultivation. Wheat, the principal crop, matured early and the crops had no disease at that time. What’s more, rust was unheard of in the valley and there was nothing to foul the waving golden strand of grain.

If there had only been a sufficient amount of water, the valley would have been settled long before it was.

Another problem that delayed development was the fact that the valley was so far removed from the market. There were no negotiable roads north nor south and no through railroads until pretty close to the turn of the century.

William’s father, William Laird Adam, opened the first store in the immediate Central City area in 1870, taking in everything that the farmers brought to him in lieu of cash. He then shipped the goods from Port Harford to San Francisco. According to the book, “This is Our Valley,” hay and grain, eggs, butter, beeswax and hides were among the items of barter. His store was located on Guadalupe Road, about 1½ miles west of Blosser Road.

He later sold the store to his son, William C. and James Goodwin, who moved the store to the corner of East Main Street and Broadway in Central City.

Adams’ store was a wood frame structure as were all structures at that time.

Lumber was brought into the valley on the ships that periodically came into Cave Landing, and later Point Sal and Port Harford.

There was no landing chute at the time, but one was later built to facilitate the incoming and outgoing cargo. The lumber was “surfed” to shore: It was merely dumped

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

The store on the southwest corner of Main Street and Broadway, in Santa Maria, shown in 1884, was owned by William C. Adam. His father, William Laird Adam, started the store on Guadalupe Road. The Adam family arrived in 1869. overboard and allowed to wash to shore with the waves.

“We had to be careful to pick a calm day or our lumber would be pounded to pieces before we could reach it,” William C. Adam recalled.

“Erecting a building in those days was no easy matter, and in comparison to the standards of today, the finished product was not all that could be desired,” he said. The lumber was not graded, and it came in all lengths and widths. In addition to being split or “shaved,” the shingles were not sawed as they are today. That improvement in the building indus-

try was to come later.

In the early days of the valley, it was often difficult for the settlers to prove rights to the land they had acquired, Adam said.

Land not acquired by grants was usually taken by homesteading or presentation. By these latter two methods, a settler had to live on the land for three years and make certain improvements in order to acquire title.

Sometimes, when a settler found it necessary to leave the valley for perhaps a month or so, he often returned to find that another person had moved in on his land and claimed it. To prevent this,

the Settlers’ League was formed, which constituted a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the ranchers that, if one of their number left his land, the others would watch it until he came back, so that no stranger could take possession.

It was not until about 1879, that rights to land could be proved, and even at that, there was much legal “red tape” before ownership was finally determined, Adam said.

“The lawyers were kept busy.”

Adam recalled an old corral built in north Santa Maria, probably south of the Santa Maria River.

It was built so that the ranchers would have a place to impound the

stock found “trespassing” on one or more of the valley residents’ property, he explained. The animals were kept in the enclosure for two weeks, then put up for auction.

Adam inherited his father’s energy and financial acumen, and became as prominent in his day as the elder Adam had been in Santa Maria’s early days. He married Ada Kelly, of San Francisco, in 1888. They had four children — Irma, Phyllis, Elmo and Leonald.

William C. Adam died in 1944 and is buried in the Santa Maria Cemetery next to his wife, who died in 1943.

Remembering the Sinton and Brown Feedlot

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ince no precise records exist, and those who would know the complete history are no longer with us, it’s generally assumed that the Sinton and Brown Feedlot in Betteravia, operating about a half-mile from Union Sugar’s beet processing plant, was built some time near the turn of the century, about the same time that the sugar plant was built.

Beet pulp, the wet, soggy waste left after the sugar is extracted from the plant, was a worthless substance until it was found to be an excellent source of roughage when added to cattle feed.

However, up until the time this discovery was made, mills found the pulp hard to dispose of as it didn’t burn readily. Then, instead of it being a disposal problem, the beet pulp acquired great economic value.

As a result, whenever there was a sugar beet mill, a cattle feeding lot of substantial size was likely to be operating close by.

The trains that ran along the 4-mile-long narrow gauge railroad, served as traveling lunch wagons for a herd of hungry cattle. The trains filled the trackside troughs at an average of 15,000 head per year, cattle that enjoyed their last brief stopover (and meal) before satisfying the tastes of the beef eaters of America.

Until 1934, mule power moved cars over the light iron tracks that ran between the cattle pens. However, when new management took over, they retired the mules in favor of small gasoline locomotives whose ties were acquired when the Pacific Coast Railroad was abandoned.

The Pacific Coast, being narrow gauge, had ties that were not long enough for reuse under the standard track, but were perfect for use on the cattle feed line.

For years, some of the cars that rolled on arch-bar trucks had once, equipped with traction motors, propelled the yellow trolley cars of the Los Angeles Railway through the streets of L.A. Other cars were relics of the Stone Canon Pacific that once ran a 24-mile short line north from a connection with the Southern Pacific near San Miguel, which served coal mines in the Coast Range.

When the mines closed, some of the roller-bearing mine cars found their way to the Santa Maria feed lot, where they were used to haul wet beet pulp ensilage.

When a dehydrating plant was built so that the ensilage could be fed dry, the old mine cars, whose

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS‌

A train car moves cattle feed between pens at the Sinton and Brown Feedlot in an undated photo. The facility southwest of Santa Maria was open between the 1930s and 1980s. metal parts were so completely corroded that nothing remained of the original equipment but the wheels and axles, were retired.

On a typical day, the little railroad would move a half dozen or more two-car trains, the exact number depending on how many cattle were on the lot. The empties were put onto a track under the loader down at the end of the lot, where the Santa Maria Railroad ran past, and 15 tons of the feed were chuted down into the two big hoppers.

The loaded cars were checked on the weigh tract and then the locomotives took over by moving the cars up the short hill to the pens. As the train crept up the exposed stops, a brisk northwesterly wind swirled fragments of feed down around the laboring locomotive.

A gasoline-driven generator that supplied power for the conveyors chattered away on the second unit. As the train reached a pen where cattle where waiting, the operator on his high platform, moved a lever and the feed would cascade down into the trough.

At first, cattle fresh from the range would lumber nervously away from the fence, only to cautiously return to the filled trough as soon as the cars had passed.

However, after the cattle had been on the lot for a while, their attitudes changed and they would lean through the fence in anticipation, but still far enough away to avoid being hit. Taking into account the

An aerial view shows the Sinton and Brown Feedlot in 1950. The town of Betteravia is shown at upper right and Santa Maria Valley Railroad cars are at the bottom of the picture. loading, weighing and feed, a full train moving at a 5 mph clip took almost an hour to feed the mostly Angus and Hereford “guests.”

Cable Car #42, built in 1909 and used for 44 years on the mostly vanished O’Farrell, Jones and Hyde Line in San Francisco, was rescued from the Bay Area junkyard in 1954 by H. Stanley Brown, partner in the Sinton and Brown Feedlot.

After installing a gasoline engine in the car body and making some adjustments to the car to keep it clear of the feed troughs, Brown used it to carry cattle buyers out on the rails to look over

their prospective purchases.

In rainy weather, the once elegant lady doubled as a crew car.

However, with the excellent care given to it, #42 remained in good shape throughout the years.

Although it wasn’t the only cable car from that period in existence, it was the only one that hadn’t been altered and was in good enough shape to withstand whatever renovations were necessary.

The Sinton and Brown Feed Lot closed in 1979 and the old relic was once again was put into retirement. However, another chapter in its life was about to begin.

When Brown’s widow offered

to give #42 back to San Francisco, the Market Street Railway Company, acting as the city’s agent, jumped at the chance to bring the car back to its home.

Market Street Railway volunteers joined the Muni staff in loading the car onto a cable car trailer in the summer of 1993 and ushered the relic on a memorable 300-mile ride on Highway 101 amid the astonishing stares of those who watched it pass by.

When old #42 reached its final destination, a volunteer crew began the painstaking job of carefully stripping and revarnishing this important relic of the past.

Roof canvas was replaced, windows were updated with safety glass and operating modifications were made. When some parts couldn’t be found, they were fabricated by talented and industrious volunteers with the goal of obtaining a faithful reproduction of #42’s 1920 appearance.

Since the trucks that powered the car across the cattle lot were salvaged from two rare narrow-gauge Los Angeles Railway “Birney” Streetcars, the Main Street Railway traded one to San Jose’s vintage trolley group in exchange for cash and their expert skills in restoring the gold leaf letter on #42, thus saving thousands of dollars.

Thanks to the good care and generosity of the Browns, Cable Car #42, the last remaining unaltered O’Farrell line body and a 00 true historic relic, was back home. 1

SANTA MARIA TIMES

HEART OF THE VALLEY

Friday, September 21, 2018 | S11

City incorporation and Whiskey Row

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lmost 122 years ago, Santa Marians went to the polls to vote either for or against the incorporation of the town.

It was a hot subject because, if the town incorporated, Whiskey Row was sure to be history. The “wets” wanted things to stay the same while the “dries” wanted the “eyesore” on East Main and Broadway to go.

When the polls opened June 25, 1895, Santa Marians voted at either the Hart House reading room or the Bryant and Trott hardware store, both located on East Main Street.

In case the measure carried, the names of five prospective members of the board of trustees were included on the ballot. However, the spaces for clerk, treasurer and town marshal were left blank, allowing voters to write in their candidates of preference.

Although the contest was said to have been earnest but good-natured, the race was so evenly divided that contestants were “neck and neck,” with neither side willing to concede until the results had been announced by the judges.

When the results finally came in, the official count showed the measure was defeated by 10 votes.

Sensitive to the issue, the Santa Maria Times reported: “Were it not so painful a subject to the boys elected to offices that don’t exist, we would give the official returns, but our kindness of heart causes us to desist.”

However, the issue was not dead.

When the voters went to the polls Sept. 12, 1905, and the votes were finally tallied, the Board of Supervisors announced that, of the 368 eligible voters, 202 voted to incorporate, while 139 people were against the measure. Obviously, there wasn’t a full turnout.

Thus, Santa Maria became duly incorporated as a “Municipal Corporation of the Sixth Class,” under the name and style of “City of Santa Maria.”

The first board of trustees (now the City Council) for the new city included Emmett T. Bryant, Alvin W. Cox, William Mead, Reuben Hart and Samuel Fleisher. Madison Thornburgh became the city’s first treasurer, John Walker the first clerk and ex-officio assessor, while G.L. Blosser became city marshal and ex-officio tax and license collector.

At the first meeting of the board, held on the 21st of the month in the directors’ room of the First National Bank building, the group elected Alvin Cox as president, and Thomas Preisker (father of Leo Preisker) became the new city attorney.

The board meeting, though, was mostly dedicated to getting into motion the machinery of city government.

That night, Ordinance No. 1, regulating liquor licenses, was passed and ordered published in the Times.

A saloon on Whiskey Row — the 100 block of East Main Street — in Santa Maria.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL MUSEUM

The Palomino Saloon on Whiskey Row in Santa Maria.

By the Oct. 24 meeting, other items had appeared on the agenda, such as measures prohibiting fast riding or driving, as well as keeping animals off the sidewalks.

In addition to the members voting on the licensing merrygo-rounds, they appointed Matt Jessee as “Night Watch” (night patrolman) and awarded the office of pound master to Joseph Spriggs. Petitions to open two saloons, though, were rejected.

One of the group’s first clashes with local citizens arose over the application of business licenses.

With merchants having a difficult time reconciling themselves to this fee, some of them even threatened to refuse to pony up.

Although a flood of protests engulfed the board for several hot meetings, the merchants eventually resigned themselves to paying the business license fee, and the board went on to discuss other matters of importance to the new city.

When Emmett Bryant resigned from his position on the board the following April, William C. Oakley took his place. Oakley served one term (1906-08), but was returned to office in 1912 and was soon elected by the members to succeed Alvin Cox as president.

Oakley served as president until 1916. In 1918, he was elected to the board and was again elected president. He served in this capacity until 1920.

Oakley later served as county supervisor and state assemblyman.

Sam Fleisher served on the board until January of 1910, while both William Mead and Alvin

Cox (who was president for seven years) left in 1912.

When Reuben Hart resigned from the board in 1912, Ernest Gibson took his place.

It wasn’t until 1927 that the word “mayor” came into use through an act of the state Legislature, resulting in Arthur F. Fugler, son of Francis and Elizabeth Fugler, technically becoming the first legally designated mayor of the city of Santa Maria. He served in this position until 1932, when he retired.

Flora Rivers, the first woman to fill an elective office in Santa Maria, became city clerk in 1928, and served in that capacity until she retired in 1944.

Sadie West, Santa Maria’s first councilwoman, was elected in April of 1930 and served until April of 1934.

For 70 years, West remained on record as the only woman ever to serve on the City Council. However, that record was broken in 2000 with the election of Alice Patino, who later became the first female council member to serve as mayor pro tem and later mayor.

Marion Rice, who was elected to the City Council in 1930, served as mayor of Santa Maria for 14 years.

According to city records, in 1974 when the office of mayor became an elective position, Elwin Mussell became the first person elected by the public instead of by council members. Mussell served as mayor until April of 1980. The following month, he was killed in a car accident.

The City Council met in four different locations before City Hall was built in 1934, with the

Whiskey Row, on the northeast block of Broadway and Main streets. first meeting being held in the director’s room of the First National Bank building (on the corner of Lincoln and West Main streets). Shortly thereafter, it began meeting at the Odd Fellows Hall, located diagonally across the street from the bank building. In June of 1909, it began meeting in the new Carnegie Library and in 1916, it moved to 116 S. Broadway.

The new City Hall, designed by Louis Noire Crawford and built at a cost of $63,000, was dedicated in September of 1934.

The following month, the council met for the first time in the new, fully paid for and city-owned building.

Among those present at the first meeting were former Mayor A.F. Fugler and Judge C. Douglas

Smith.

City Clerk Flora A. Rivers read a communication from the American Legion Marshal, N. Braden Post, asking if the city wished to dispose of the cannon formerly sitting on the library grounds, and if not, that it be given to them for safe keeping. However, this being the property of the government, it was voted to be kept redecorated and used to ornament the grounds of City Hall.

The subject of Whiskey Row was brought up numerous times until 1959, when during a City Council meeting, Mayor Curtis Tunnell announced, “Whiskey Row must go.” The “Row’s” days were numbered, and in January of 1963, the buildings were torn down — one by one.

‘Rolllie’ Goodman was known as The Orcutt Barber

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00 1

lthough his given name was Rolla Charles Goodman, friends and family called him Rollie. To everyone else, he was known as The Orcutt Barber.

Goodman was born in Willow Ranch, Modoc County in 1879.

He had two sisters. The older of the two was Annie, who died in childbirth, and the younger sister was Emma. Goodman was about 4 years old when his father died, and he was left to be raised by his grandparents. His mother later remarried a widower with five children, and they soon had three children.

As a young man, Goodman had a restless spirit. Shearing sheep, capturing wild horses for the cavalry and farming were not occupations that he found particularly inviting, so at age 20, he set off to make his mark in the big city.

It was 1899 and San Francisco was growing fast. Goodman often told his family stories of the Irish gang from Noe Valley and the Italian gang from Castro Valley clashing with each other. That could well have been the reason he took up boxing and became a bantam weight contender.

After attending barber school, he did his apprenticeship in a shop in Noe Valley. Yes, Goodman had great plans. However, his dream came to an abrupt and disastrous end on the morning of April 18, 1906, when the great quake that demolished San Francisco also took everything for which he’d worked so hard. While the city burned, he built a lean-to to live in, but finally gave up and returned to Willow Ranch.

Goodman and Ora Esther Chandler were married Oct. 6, 1906, in

PHOTO COURTESY OF DAWN GOODMAN‌

At right, Rolla “Rollie” Charles Goodwin, The Orcutt Barber.

Willow Ranch. After his sons were born, Donald Howard in 1909 and Herman Wesley in 1911, he grew restless again. In 1914, he took his family back to San Francisco.

However, this time it was different. His wife was worried about the boys wandering off and getting lost. He soon picked up stakes and moved his family to land that he’d bought in Chittenden, a small town located near Aromas.

Four years of severe drought made life difficult for the Goodmans, but when their apricot orchard was hit by a disease, they were forced to give up and sell out.

It was time to move on.

The family came down to the Divide in the narrow gauge railroad at some time around 1918, where Goodman got a job with Tidewater Oil as a pump station operator.

Ora’s parents were now living

in Nipomo, and the oil fields were continuing to increase production, thus needing more workers, a natural draw for the small family.

The biggest problem was housing.

As Herman Goodman related in Bob Nelson’s Old Town Orcutt, “We first lived in a 16-foot square tent with the Kirkpatricks and their three sons with a perimeter boarding three feet high.” Four adults and five children occupied 256 feet! A short time later, the family was given a company home and stayed there two and a half years while Goodman serviced the pumps and Ora cooked for the workers. Their two sons learned the oil business from the ground up.

“We took over the cookhouse and my mother became the cook.

That’s how we got home,” son Herman said.

Later, the couple bought a cabin

on Clark Street in Orcutt and added on to it. Over the years, it was remodeled several times and was the home of Ora and Rollie, as well as their son and daughter-inlaw, Herman and Rose, and their granddaughter, Dawn.

Through the years the Goodmans owned a house on Pacific Street, but lost it in bankruptcy.

They later bought it back and eventually sold it, using the money to buy another house on First Street, where they lived until Goodman retired.

Although he left barbering and went into several businesses, Goodman eventually returned to barbering.

It’s been said that his first barber shop was located next door to a saloon and billiard hall, toward the right of the center in the 100 block of Clark. However, others say that it was inside the pool hall, and that there was a bath house partitioned off at the back of the building. Old photos show two poles with red and white stripes standing outside the shop. The barber shop was lost when all the buildings in the 100 block of East Carke burned down in the Coleman fire of 1922.

Goodman would tell stories of tired and dirty men coming into town. After cleaning up, they’d head to the barber shop for a shave and haircut, costing six bits (75 cents). Afterward, they’d head to the saloon for a game of pool.

The barbershop was open until the last man had been served.

Sometimes Goodman would have only a few hours’ sleep in between shifts before he’d be back at work again. When the noon whistle blew and he had had a hot meal at

home, he’d often take a well-deserved nap.

Son Donald remembered shining shoes at the back of the shop for 30 cents a pair. He did this for two years while attending high school. Although the fire closed the shop, it was set up in the mercantile until the new block was built.

The new barber shop was located in about the same place as the first, but was not as fancy. In later years, a ladies’ beauty shop was in the back, where there was a tall contraption that had long cords hanging down with clips on the end. This was a new way of giving permanents — a most harrowing experience!

After World War II ended, Earl Jennings bought the shop for $2,000. The fountain that was located next door was later replaced

by Walker’s 5 & 10 Variety Store.

Both the barbershop and variety store are now Kay’s Country Kitchen.

By the time Goodman retired in 1947, he was cutting the hair of a third of Orcutt families.

After his retirement, both he and Ora left town for some time, but eventually returned and moved back into the Clark Street house.

However, Goodman’s barbering days were not over.

When Hap Cory at the Wye Barber Shop, asked for help, the bored Goodman was ready to work part time. He always said that he would have never retired if he knew that he’d live so long. He died Oct. 9, 1974, at the age of 95. Ora died four years later on Sept. 8, 1978. She was 93. Both Ora and Rollie are buried in the Santa Maria Cemetery.

S12 | Friday, September 21, 2018

HEART OF THE VALLEY

SANTA MARIA TIMES

The beginnings of Blochman City

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lthough the average age of the 50 residents of Blochman City in 1931 was only 10 years, the young citizens of the town not only designed their town, but built it and ran it. In the course of building their city on only 20,000 square feet of land, the children, in addition to laying out streets 2,000 feet long, erected buildings not exceeding 12 feet high.

Bina Fuller, a country schoolteacher with a great idea, long felt that elementary school students were living in a “cloistered world and were not aware of the realities of living.” In addition to the lack of inspiration and imagination, the basics of arithmetic, geography and history came from lifeless books, and since they were confined to the classroom, the children were never linked with the outside world.

How could a child be expected to understand the problems of his parents if he knew nothing about running a house? What would civic consciousness mean to a child who never saw government at work? In short, Fuller felt that children should have an earlier start at the business of being adults, a problem that she vowed one day to change.

Long before she earned her teaching credentials, Fuller knew that she would approach the profession from a different angle.

Knowing that children often sold lemonade in the streets and pretended to be doctors and nurses, she felt that these were things that should be part of the school curriculum.

She totally agreed with the famed progressive educationalist John Dewey, who felt that “schools should be life, itself, not a mere preparation for living.”

After completing her formal education, Fuller taught school in New York for a short time before moving with her husband, George, to California in 1911, where he eventually came to work in the oilfields of Cat Canyon. The sudden influx of oil workers led to the creation of the Blochman School District, where Fuller was

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO, SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM‌

Blochman City was built in 1931 for schoolchildren who designed it, built it and ran it. appointed teacher in the small, two-room schoolhouse.

Two days after Fuller began teaching in this overcrowded schoolhouse, she began a career that was destined to have an unprecedented effect on the Santa Maria Valley as well as education in general. It wasn’t long before she began experiments, which led to her students’ future town.

With the help of another teacher, Teresa Bruce, in one corner of the classroom, she built a crude store counter with empty tin cans to represent various types of merchandise. In another corner, she placed a wooden grill with a cardboard sign that read “The Bank.”

Since the room was too small to create a library, post office or small nursery, Fuller began looking at the bleak expanse of schoolyard and envisioned a small town on the property. After presenting her

idea to the students, she put them all to work.

One group of boys drew the blueprints for the buildings, while another group estimated the amount of materials required.

The girls did both the inside designing and interior decorating.

An election was held in which the students chose a mayor/city council-type of government, and a constitution was framed. Seventh-grade architects surveyed the land and laid it out in 224 lots, each 25 feet by 16½ feet.

With no money and the proposed building site on the Palmer Oil lease, the children began putting out the word about their dream town.

When John Williamson, president of the Palmer Stendel Oil Corporation, of Los Angeles, came to the school to investigate the proposed project, he was so impressed with the idea that he

offered to lend them the 20,000 square feet of land needed to help put up the first building.

Blochman City was on its way to becoming a reality.

After borrowing a tractor and a road scraper, the students marked out six short streets. Speedway, the main street, was 16 feet wide and 100 feet long, where the town’s bank, general store, post office and florist shop were scheduled to be built. Hand-lettered signs solemnly warned that the speed limit was 10 mph.

Frank Gates, a contractor from Santa Maria, donated the sand and gravel, while building experts from Santa Maria, Santa Barbara and other surrounding towns gave advice regarding water lines and curb stones.

When Fuller found spare lumber owned by the school district, she persuaded the Blochman School District trustees to donate it to her

students’ building project. After additional lumber was hauled in by rail on the Narrow-Gauge Railroad, a few apprehensive students insisted on standing guard over it the entire night.

Some of the boys borrowed a truck and enlisted the help of their older brothers in bringing in tons of earth to be used as a foundation cover for the adobe soil. Interested merchants in Santa Maria donated nails and hardware.

When the cornerstone was laid for the Blochman City store, Williamson was there as promised, dressed in overalls and carrying tools, ready to supervise each step along the way. With every boy and girl being put to work either sawing wood or hammering nails, the city’s store was put up in one day. In the succeeding months of building their city, the students Please see BLOCHMAN CITY, Page S16

The end of Blochman City

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rom the day it opened in 1931, Blochman School students grew dissatisfied with the appearance of their store and decided to redecorate, James Michael wrote to a wallboard company in New York and outlined the problem. After receiving scale drawings of the little store, the company sent enough wallboard, fasteners and trim to complete the project. Other companies sent enough candy, groceries and soft drinks to last a year. When the grand reopening of the store took place, it proved to be a major event for both Blochman City and the surrounding towns.

After the grand festivities ended, the children settled down to the business of running their town, and worked toward the solution of the same type of problems that plague every other city in its beginning stages. However, the success of Blochman City, the brainchild of Bina Fuller, exceeded her expectations.

The mayor and members of the City Council were elected by popular vote at an annual election. Fuller’s stepson, George, was elected the city’s first mayor with a salary of $500 per year. In turn, he appointed various commissioners and inspectors to take care of the city’s streets, houses, parks, tools, water and police.

Blochman City was assessed by the city’s assessor, giving it a valuation of $40,000 with a tax rate of 13 cents per each $100 of assessed valuation.

Everyone who worked was paid $3.50 a day. Although the money was only acceptable in Blochman City, the students respected that money as much as they’d have respected any other currency in the world.

On Speedway Street, the main thoroughfare, the city’s bank looked and functioned like a real bank with a cashier and teller windows made and gilded by the students. The walls were finished in knotty pine.

Each citizen of the little city had both a commercial and savings account and was required to know how to write checks correctly, keep books, read and understand statement forms and to figure interest.

Bank of America donated the deposit books, checkbooks, statement forms and other such materials and each new depositor received an instruction booklet on banking.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO, SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM‌

Children play in a field between Blochman School and Blochman City, shown in an undated photo.

Loans were made with the proper security for the purchase of real property and were required to be paid off in a year. The innovative approach to arithmetic provided the students with practical experience in business finance.

Anthony Bartholomew, the city’s first cashier, later became a successful banker in Santa Maria.

English competency became “business communications” when the students wrote letters to companies asking for the donation of much needed material.

Although the city’s post office was at first furnished with packing crates and other crude material, when an old post office was dismantled in Sisquoc, the mailboxes were donated to the school and each student had his or her own lockbox.

Mail was distributed and collected at regular hours each day and picked up by a carrier for postmarking in Santa Maria, some earmarked for such faraway places as Africa, Alaska, Italy, Germany and Japan.

With teachers and parents encouraging pen-pal friendships, tourists were known to arrive in the United States and immediately make inquiries about Blochman City.

When the Afghanistan government sent five scholars to the University of Illinois, two of them first came to Blochman City. This couldn’t have pleased Bina Fuller more.

“Our youngsters in Blochman City know the real meaning of

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY EDWARD J. ZEMAITIS‌

Two concrete posts that marked the entrance is all that remains of the old Blochman School. friendship and world understanding,” she wrote.

When the students began to receive souvenirs from other countries, the Blochman City Museum was built on Ditch Drive, (just behind the bank) to be used as a place to display these treasures.

Included in the collection was a piece of gold ore from West Africa, cotton pods from Memphis and Indian arrows from New York.

A carved totem pole along with an explanation of its symbolism came from Alaska.

Whenever the school received such an item, it was first discussed in class and ways were found to link it with its geography, history or social science studies.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was made more vivid when the city received a real bullet from the Gettysburg battlefields.

Blochman City’s Chamber

of Commerce contacted travel agencies, and other organizations asking them to contribute posters, road maps, travel pamphlets and other material to be used for the students’ imaginary travels.

The county nurse came to the city’s health center once a week to record weights and heights and to answer questions from the curious and responsible citizens.

Students learned the rudiments of good farming by growing seedlings for the town’s lawns and parks and working in the florist shop, selling flowers and potted plants.

The city’s public library was stocked with books from the Santa Barbara County Library, while works of the noted painter and cartoonist Jimmy Swinnerton hung on the walls of the art museum.

The city’s streets were kept

clean through the efforts of its sanitation department and since there was no crime in Blochman City, the police chief and commissioners were put to work in keeping Main, Eucalyptus, Cypress streets and Ditch Drive clean.

Once a month, on Public Relations Day, visitors were permitted to sit in on City Council meetings where important city problems were discussed, such as disorderly conduct on the school bus or the littering on city streets.

The end of Blochman City came when the Blochman School closed in 1951. Earl Burger, the man who bought the school building, used the materials to build a home.

It was reported that a Mr. Silva bought the little school buildings, but I’ve yet to find out what happened to them or to the items that were once displayed in the city’s museum.

Furthermore, since no landmarks of Blochman City remain, one would be hard-pressed to find the location of the little city.

Fuller’s students gained much by their teacher’s vision. As she once said, “The truly great citizens of real worth are those who can be depended upon to meet their obligations in any community, to do their duty and to make the world a better place.

“They can do it as bankers, grocers, nurses or housewives, as long as they’re honest with life and the people that they meet in life.

If I have helped one child find an ideal, I shall feel I’ve done some- 00 1 thing worthwhile.”

SANTA MARIA TIMES

HEART OF THE VALLEY

Friday, September 21, 2018 | S13

Memorable dates in history from 1782 to 2005 ‌Aug. 7, 1782: Gen. George Washington issued an order establishing the Honorary Badge of Distinction, otherwise known as the Badge of Military Merit. The award of the Purple Heart ceased with the end of the Revolutionary War but was revived in 1932, the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birthday. The Purple Heart represents the most honorable characteristics in a service member and citizen. It was has been awarded to more than 1.5 million recipients.

Aug. 28,1872: A post office was established at La Graciosa with Charles H. South serving as postmaster.

Aug. 21, 1874: The Guadalupe Masonic Lodge voted to purchase land with the Odd Fellows to be used as a cemetery.

August 1883: Dr. Gillespie became the first person to be buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard.

Aug. 1, 1888: The Hart House (later the Bradley Hotel) officially opened with a grand ball held at McMillan’s Hall.

Aug. 13, 1888: Lompoc, founded in 1874, incorporated with a population of 1015.

August 1891: Santa Maria Union High School District, the oldest union high school district in the state, was formed. Prior to 1891, high schools in California could only be built and maintained in incorporated towns. This made it difficult, if not impossible, for small communities to support a high school without generous donations from private parties.

Aug. 10, 1896: Nancy Kelsey, the first white woman to enter California over the perilous and uncharted Sierra Madre mountains, died in Cottonwood Canyon.

August 1901: After digging two dry holes, Western Union Oil Company struck oil at Careaga’s well No. 3. This first oil discovery in the hills brought in about 50 barrels a day.

Aug. 15, 1904: The Careaga Post Office, situated at the Pacific Coast Railway’s Careaga Station, was established. The post office closed October 12, 1909.

Aug. 20, 1905: Mass was celebrated for the first time for Catholic families in Santa Maria by Rev. Mathias Tiernes at McMillan’s Hall.

August 1908: With Frank Darby as contractor, construction began on the Carnegie Library.

The building was completed in May of the following year.

August 1913: The Buddhist Church in Guadalupe, at 209 Main St., incorporated as the Guadalupe Buddhist Mission.

August 1919: The Guadalupe Japanese School opened, serving the Santa Maria Valley. With Shinobu Matsuura as principal, the school functioned through 1928.

Aug. 26, 1920: The Santa Maria Times announced that the 19th amendment to the Constitution was in effect, guaranteeing American women the right to vote.

August 1928: Setsuo Aratani’s

PHOTO COURTESY OF GLENN BATTLES, CONTRIBUTED‌

Main Street School in 1945. On Aug. 3, 1965, the Santa Maria Elementary School District ordered its demolition. baseball team, the Aratanis, sailed from San Francisco to Japan on the Korea Maru on a good-will tour.

The four-month tour ended with the team returning to the United States having racked up 25 wins, one tie and four losses.

Aug. 7 to 11, 1928: Over 17,000 people attended the first official Santa Barbara County Fair. Originating in 1891, it was first known as the Santa Maria Valley Fair.

Aug. 14, 1929: The California Highway Patrol was created by the state Legislature to ensure the safety of California highways and that of all who use them. Originally part of a division of the DMV, it became a department of its own in October 1947. The Department of the California Highway Patrol and the position of commissioner was created to head the new department. In 1995, it merged with the California State Police.

Aug. 4, 1943: Bond sales at the Veterans’ Memorial Building resulted in Leona Haslam being the proud owner of Col. Mann’s Tennessee Walking filly, Trelauney.

Mrs. Haslam later donated the horse to the Elks, and the rest of the story became the history of the Elks Rodeo.

Aug. 9, 1943: The Bureau of Naval Personnel issued a Purple Heart to Kenneth Cooper, United States Navy Fire Controlman 3rd Class. Kenneth Cooper, along with his brother, Clarence, died aboard the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

August 1944: FBI special agent William B. Nolan was assigned to Santa Maria as the only agent in

the only agency bounded on the south by Gaviota, on the north by Monterey County, on the east by Kern County and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.

Aug. 12, 1944: The first Women’s Military Unit (WACS) arrived at the Santa Maria Airfield.

Pending completion of the WACS quarters, the enlisted women were assigned to Ward 10, of the Field Hospital.

Aug. 15, 1945: V-J. Day. Surrender documents were signed Sept. 2, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri.

Aug. 30, 1945: A homecoming was held at Camp Cooke when the 13th Armored Division from California returned after service in Europe. The Black Cat outfit was among the first to return from World War II and was assigned to retraining for deployment on the Asian Front.

Aug. 3, 1946: Guadalupe incorporated, with a population of about 4,000.

Aug. 1, 1947: The Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce incorporated.

Aug. 7, 1950: Camp Cooke reopened. The base was used during the Korean War as an armored and infantry training site.

Aug. 16, 1953: The Santa Maria Dragons had their first drag race where Foster Rd is today.

August 1956: The Santa Maria Valley Historical Society received keys for its new headquarters located above the South Counties Gas Company, on Main and Lincoln Streets.

August 1959: The disciplinary

barracks of Camp Cooke were transferred to the U. S. Bureau of Prisons. The complex is now known as the U. S. Penitentiary at Lompoc.

Aug. 25, 1960: Eugene Lenz became the second man from Santa Maria to compete in the Olympic Games. John Paulsen was the first.

August 1961: The Santa Maria Valley Senior Citizens Club was organized with 20 charter members and annual dues of $1.

Aug. 19, 1961: Construction began on the $3.8 million shopping center at Stowell and Broadway. Lease arrangements were made with a variety of commercial stores and banks, including Thrifty Drug Stores, W.T. Grant Co., Karl’s Shoe Store, Crocker Bank, Sally Shops, Cornet Stores plus several service shops. Completion was expected to take place in March of 1962.

Aug. 3, 1965: The 52-year-old Main Street School was ordered demolished after the Santa Maria Elementary School District decided that its condition had deteriorated to the point where it was no long safe to use the building.

Demolition took place Sept. 23.

Aug. 8, 1966: Demolition of the 58-year-old Carnegie Library began, and was completed the following day. The library opened in 1909, and had served as Santa Maria’s library until the new library was built in 1941.

Aug. 19, 1966: Santa Maria contractor J.A. Roberts, who had submitted the lowest bid of $11,500, began tearing down Santa

Maria’s 137-foot-tall water tower.

The tank had been abandoned three years earlier when a 6 million gallon, $200,000 reservoir was built on top of a hill south of town.

Aug. 20, 1966: The cornerstone of the old Carnegie Library was opened. Among those in attendance at this historic event were Hattie Hart Scott, Louella Williams, Gaylord Jones and Walter Stokes, all of whom had witnessed the cornerstone laying on Oct. 3, 1908.

Aug. 10, 1968: The 40-acre Preisker Park, site of the former city dump, was dedicated and opened to the public.

Aug. 26, 1968: Groundbreaking took place for the new Elks Lodge building.

August 1975: Sears became the first store to open in the new Santa Maria Town Center.

Aug. 31, 1975: The San Ramon Chapel was dedicated as California State Landmark #877. Mass was celebrated by the Rev. Bertin Foxen, great-grandson of Benjamin and Eduarda Foxen.

August 1984: Plans were made to build a flight museum in Santa Maria. The grand opening took place July 21, 1990, with five vintage planes on display.

August 1987: Princess Hall, which was built on Pine Street between Main and Church streets, was torn down.

August 1993: Holly Sugar closed its Betteravia plant.

Aug. 18, 1994: The bas relief of the ship Santa Maria, currently hanging in the Wells Fargo Branch office at Miller and Main streets, was designated by the City Manager’s Office as an object of historical merit.

Aug. 31, 1996: Blaine Johnson, 34, a leading figure in drag racing, was killed while qualifying at the 1996 U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.

Aug. 12, 1997: Scoop Nunes, Santa Maria’s “Mr. Baseball,” was inducted into the National Semi-Professional Baseball Congress in Wichita, Kansas. Nunes, a local sports legend and longtime manager of the Santa Maria Indians, died in November 2003.

Aug. 7, 1998: Joni Gray was appointed to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors by Gov. Pete Wilson and was elected to complete the unfinished twoyear term of Pete Staffal on Nov. 3.

Aug. 10, 2002: Gary Leffew, 1962 Santa Maria Union High School graduate, was inducted into the Professional Rodeo Hall of Fame. Leffew grew up on the Suey Ranch.

Aug. 25, 2003: Larry Kunz, Santa Maria’s “King of Aces,” hit his 2,000th hole in one.

Aug. 17, 2004: The opening of Pioneer Valley High School marked the first time in 42 years that a new high school was opened in Santa Maria.

Aug. 29, 2005: After 80 years of family ownership, the descendants of Capt. G. Allan Hancock decided to sell the Santa Maria Valley Railroad.

Play ball! Baseball came to Santa Maria in 1882 ‌W

00 1

hen the game of baseball was introduced to the Santa Maria Valley in 1882, it quickly caught on and before long each town had its own team, with the Santa Maria Stars capturing the interest of the locals.

It seemed as though every man, young and old, wanted to get in there and play the game. However, when some of those men showed less agility than others and went home with mashed fingers and dislocated thumbs, they soon decided that being loud spectators was a much safer occupation. This game of baseball was serious business and best left to the younger chaps.

A playing field was created when level land was cleared off, a makeshift backstop was built and four bags to be used as bases were set down. The team was then ready to play ball.

In addition to the local towns sponsoring teams, so did the oil leases, thus making the competition fierce.

In 1907, the young men of Santa Maria formed the Golden Bears Club, a single men’s club. With Fred Haslam as manager, and uniforms supplied to every player, the team members encouraged anyone who could swing a bat to compete with them on the fields.

Even the high schools became part of this sports revolution.

From 1930 to 1939, through the superb coaching of “Kit” Carson, Santa Maria High School won nine championships in a row, beating the Herbert Hoover High School to win the CIF Championship in

STAFF FILE‌

Clarence Joseph “Scoop” Nunes, who died in 2003 at the age of 79, was the Santa Maria Indians’ general manager and board president for 43 years.

1932.

In 1944, the Santa Maria Elks Lodge #1538 formed the semi-professional Santa Maria Indians baseball team, with Mutt Anderson coming aboard as the new team’s first manager, Manuel Bello as business manager and Frank Shields as board chairman.

Some 2,000 Santa Maria baseball fans were treated to a double-header on April 19, 1948, when they gathered together to witness the dedication of the Elks Field, the city’s new baseball park, and to watch the season’s opening game between the Bank of America of Los Angeles and the hometown Indians.

From a rostrum set up in the infield, the dedication program began with E.D. (Jeff) Cochran, chairman of the dedication cere-

mony committee, introducing J.S. McDonell, exalted ruler of the Elks lodge.

Serving as master of ceremonies, McDonell presented the city with a huge American flag and an equally large California state flag for the park’s 60-foot center field flagpole.

Four officers of the Elks lodge, Councilmen Glenn Seaman, Pat Patton, Jerry Madsen and Paul Sanchez, led the flag-raising ceremonies. The men had been accompanied to the flagpole by a combined color guard representing the local post of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Ethel Mae Dorsey gave a stirring rendition of the national anthem as the flag was being raised. Music was provided by the Elks Boys’ Band, directed by

Lester Hayes, and the Santa Maria Municipal Band, directed by John Amaral Jr. Manuel Bello, of the Indians, and Al Shureen, of Bank of America, introduced the members of the two teams.

Mayor Alfred Roemer, in concluding the stirring ceremonies, issued the proclamation designating the field as Elks Field.

After a few practice throws, the mayor then tossed the first pitch to Councilman L.S. Petersen, past exalted ruler of the Elks, who was the first batter, with Supervisor T.A. Twitchell serving as catcher.

Holding a huge bat painted with black and white stripes, Petersen gave a mighty swing, but missed.

With that, the two waiting teams proceeded to play ball.

The Indians’ second baseman, Carl Barbettini, in slashing a single, made the first hit for the Indians in the new field. When Hank Bonetti, the Indians’ right fielder, hit the game’s first homer, with center fielder Ray Anderson on base, the fans went wild as the Indians went ahead, 3 to 1. Bonetti’s ball had sailed over the right field fence, clearing it by at least 6 feet, directly over a marker labeling the distance from home plate as 352 feet. The one run scored in the first inning by the L.A. team proved to be the only run that the bankers scored in the entire game.

Este Signorelli, the Indian’s first baseman, smashed a homer over the same fence during the sixth inning, bringing home Bonetti and left fielder Mutt Anderson.

A series of errors plagued the

L.A. team and they seemed to fall apart in the eighth inning, committing four errors and allowing four Indian runs to score.

In the ninth inning, Indian pitcher Troy Rider, who had thrown a great game throughout the day, stopped a near threat by the L.A. team, which had two men on base and two outs. He struck out the L.A. team’s last man up, thus ending the game with the Indians winning by a score of 11 to 1.

On Oct. 12, 1950, more than 1,200 die-hard Indian fans filled the stands, hoping that Bob Lemon’s team of professionals wouldn’t slaughter the home boys. However, as it turned out, the Indians turned the tables and applied the big squeeze to the pros.

Indians manager Butch Simas couldn’t have asked for anything better as “The Big Red Machine” boys made it clear that they weren’t a bunch of stumblebums.

On the mound for the All Stars was Lemon, top pitcher in the American League, with 23 wins and 11 losses to his credit during the previous season. At center field was Irv Noren, rookie sensation of the Washington Senators, while Bill Wilson of the Chicago White Sox played left field. Ray Boone’s claim to fame was to be the guy who caused the great Lou Boudreau of the Cleveland Indians to bench himself. Del Crandall, who was behind the plate, was good enough to have started catching for the Boston Braves at the tender age of 19.

Please see BASEBALL, Page S16

HEART OF THE VALLEY

S14 | Friday, September 21, 2018

SANTA MARIA TIMES

Trelauney kick-starts annual Elks Rodeo and Parade

‌T

he Elks Rodeo and Parade, one of the greatest annual attractions on the Central Coast, might never have come about had it not been for a Tennessee Walking Horse named Trelauney.

The story goes back to 1943, during World War II, when the United States was on the offensive and people on the homefront conducted bond sale contests to help the war effort.

On Aug. 4, 1943, at the Santa Maria Veterans Memorial Building, Leona Pearl Haslam of Santa Maria gave the winning pledge of $25,000 to acquire Col. Manning’s Tennessee Walking filly from his La Piocho Ranch in Santa Ynez.

Later, when Haslam saw her feed bills getting out of hand and she wanted to get rid of the horse, the Elks stepped in and became the proud owners of Trelauney, the Tennessee Walker.

The Elks Recreation Foundation, formed on Nov. 18, 1943, organized a dance to be held the following December and offered Trelauney as the door prize. The dance was a rousing success with the Elks netting $1,177 and Leo Scaroni winning the coveted prize. Scaroni eventually gave the filly to his son-n-law, Frank Harrington, of San Luis Obispo.

With the exception of its financial officers, the lodge was happy with the profits gained from the dance. Although $1,177 was a tidy sum, it was too big to sit on and too little to do much with.

During a discussion of what to do with the money, the idea of a rodeo was first suggested. After consulting local rodeo experts and being assured that the cost of putting on such an event would not exceed $3,000, the club voted to underwrite the first Elks Recreation Foundation Benefit Wild West Show and Race Meet at a cost “not to exceed $3,000.”

Although the show was a success, it did not go without mishap. Russ Griffith, Past Exalted Ruler and first rodeo general chairman recalled, “Two bulls broke out and ran around the fairgrounds. It seemed people were jammed around that arena 10 feet deep.

“We were just plain lucky, as we didn’t have a dime’s worth of insurance,” he said. “Anyhow, we went ahead in pure ignorance

PHOTO COURTESY OF SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL MUSEUM‌

The Elks Rodeo, circa 1962: Chuck Venable, Butch Simas and a friend, Clarence Minetti, Gene Olivera, Bob Torres and sons Kenny and Terry, and John Weldon, from left. Some 54 years later, the now-called Beard-A-Reno contest is still a mainstay of the annual event. and when the chips were through, the rodeo had cost $9,900, but showed a $3,000 profit.”

Each day of this two-day event began with the mounted horse parade starting from the Veterans Memorial Building and ending at the fairgrounds. Horse racing, at that time, was a part of the rodeo and paid more than bull riding and other events.

However, in 1964, when the state decided to replace the racetrack at the fairgrounds with exhibit buildings, fairground horse racing came to an end.

With the rodeo being such a success, the net problem facing the organization was what to do

with the money.

In 1948, the group decided to gear the profits toward recreation programs in the area. Since that time, some of the organizations having their start or encouragement from the Elks Recreation Foundation included Little League baseball, the Santa Maria Indians (a top semi-pro baseball organization), Biddy Basketball, Swim to Live, 4-H, Future Farmers of America (FFA), Camp Fire Girls, the annual Christmas Parade and many other youth-oriented groups.

As the years passed and the rodeo grew in stature, so did the quality of performances. The

Four corners and four founding fathers of the city

‌T

he village, first known as Grangeville, was laid out in 1874 by the four founding fathers, Rudolph Cook, Isaac Miller, John Thornburgh and Isaac Fesler, who each donated a parcel of land in order to form the heart of the town on the corner of what is now the intersection of Main Street and Broadway.

At that time, there were two merchandise stores owned by Miller and Lovett, and James McElhaney, respectively. In 1872, Miller and Lovett constructed the first building on the corner of the northeast section of land settled

by Isaac Miller.

The story of the “four corners” has been told many times, but the southwest corner was originally homesteaded by David “Wat” Rodenburg. When Rodenburg was killed in a hunting accident in October 1869, Larken Cook, Rudolph’s brother, took over the claim. However, Larken was a sick man and two years later he sold the property to John Thornburg.

Larken Cook died of consumption in January 1871.

Many changes were taking place during the early 1870s.

Isaac Fesler began the settlement of the northwest corner. He had come west from Linn County, Missouri, by wagon train in 1865.

He sold his land at the four corners to the Kaiser Brothers whose mercantile store carried on for a few years and was later sold for bank property (the Bank of Santa Maria). Part of Fesler’s property became the Pacific Coast Railway’s right-of-way.

Miller, who settled on the northeast corner, devoted a large portion of his land to fruit orchards. However, all was lost during an excessive dry spell. His other town venture, the Miller and Lovett Store, became Kriedel and

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL MUSEUM‌

Rudolph Cook

Isaac Miller

John Thornburgh

Isaac Fesler

Fleisher Merchandise.

Rudolph Cook, who settled on the southeast corner, did much to help the town grow because he was, by trade, a carpenter. He established a blacksmith shop and livery stable at Main and Broadway. His residence was built at the corner of what later became McClelland and East Main streets.

Thornburgh, in partnership with Rudolph Cook, Samuel Lockwood and M.H. Stephens,

founded a small cooperative store on the southwest corner of Main and Broadway. The building also included the first post office with locks and fixtures built by cabinet maker Samuel Jefferson Jones.

All four corners formed the village center.

By 1875, the town site map for the Central Coast town of Central City was recorded at the county Please see FOUNDING, Page S16

names of some of the contestants have appeared in the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

However, the rodeo didn’t go without mishap. In 1949, Carl Engel, one of the rodeo’s founders, was thrown over a fence during a mule race, and in 1963, Bobby Clark, the rodeo clown, was knocked unconscious by a bull.

During the 1970s, when Clarence Minetti, owner of the Far Western Tavern, herded his longhorn cattle along Broadway from his Los Corralitos Ranch near Guadalupe, Santa Maria Police Chief Richard Long looked a bit skeptical and said, “I sure hope that you know what you’re doing.”

Not only is the Elks Rodeo one of the top attractions in the West and the third-largest rodeo in the state, at one time it was among the Top 25 sanctioned Professional Cowboys Association’s events in the country.

Since the first rodeo, when the Elks netted a modest $3,000, the community has looked at this annual event with pride, knowing that the year’s profits have gone to programs that aid the youth of the area.

However, the annual Santa Maria Elks Rodeo and Parade might never have come about had it not been for Trelauney, a horse that no one wanted.

Following career of James ‘Joe’ Hagerman ‌J

ames “Joe” Murray Hagerman was born in Colorado on the June 28, 1916, to Margaret and Homer Hagerman. In 1925, the family moved to Inglewood. With his family moving from place to place, by 1931 Joe had attended a total of 22 schools before the family finally settled in Santa Maria. James was enrolled in Santa Maria High School where he acquired the nickname of “Joe,” a name that he used for the rest of his life.

Joe had found a home. home.

Joe graduated James “Joe” from Santa MaHagerman ria High School in 1933, and two years later from Santa Maria Junior College. After graduating from UCLA in 1938, he was hired as a reporter for Elwin Mussell’s Santa Maria Free Advertiser.

On April 26, 1942, Joe and Jean Goble were married at the Goble cabin in Colsen Canyon in the Tepusquet area.

He served in the Pacific with the U.S. Army during World War II during which time he graduated from the Army’s Primary Flight School.

After the war ended when jobs were hard to get, his father-inlaw Judge Fred Goble got him a job at Sinton & Brown’s cattle feed lot in Betteravia.

In 1947, Joe became managing editor of the Santa Maria Times as wrote a column, Take it from Joe. In 1948, he began announcing Santa Maria sporting events on radio both at home as well as on the road.

In 1951, Joe and John Groom purchased KSMA and KSMA-FM, a pair of Santa Maria’s early radio stations. The two

operated the popular stations, broadcasting Hancock College games both at home and away until 1980, when they sold the stations to Bayliss Broadcasting Company.

During the time the two operated the stations, Joe was appointed to the City of Santa Maria Recreation and Parks Commission, where he served for 38 years, including 31 years as chairman.

“Joe worked tirelessly to educate local businesses and government officials about the value of recreation programs and community parks,” said Alex Posada, Recreation and Parks director.

In 1981, Joe was elected president of the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce. Four years later, he was named the Chamber’s citizen of the year.

In 1993, three years after the Hagerman Sports Complex was dedicated, Joe was named the Elks Lodge citizen of the year.

In 2001, Joe, who loved to travel, was a founding member of the People for Leisure and Youth Inc. (PLAY) and established the Jean Hagerman Scholarship fund as a tribute to his wife, who had died in April of that year.

In 2003, he was named the grand marshal of the Elks Rodeo Parade and the following year he was presented with the City of Santa Maria Recreation and Park Commission Meritorious Community Service Award.

In 2007, he was inducted into the Guadalupe Sports Hall of Fame.

It seemed as though everyone has a story to tell about Joe Hagerman. One was that “he knew the first name of everyone who’d ever swung a bat it the city.”

Joe died July 16, 2008, and is buried in the Santa Maria Cem- 00 1 etery alongside Jean.

SANTA MARIA TIMES

HEART OF THE VALLEY

Friday, September 21, 2018 | S15

Santa Maria Speedway has thrived for more than 50 years

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amed the “Best short Track Operation West of the Mississippi” on two separate occasions, Doug and Nettie Foot’s Santa Maria Speedway opened May 30, 1964, with a Sprint car race run under the sanction of the California Racing Association in Los Angeles.

Spud Simkins was the Speedway’s first manager and Hal Minyard is recorded as having been the first winner. Doug Foot eventually took over the management, helping to mold it into one of the top dirt tracks in the country until he died in 1999.

Some of the early racers include Ronnie Souza, Jumpin’ Jimmy and Bobby Claborn, Bobby Randolph, Cliff Cook, Hap Sweet, Harold Rose, Ray Myers, Danny and Don Simkins, Ron Kelsey, Roland Lanini, Richard Amarillas and others. Jim Pluhar was the announcer for many years.

Danny Simkins, whose name is legendary in the world of auto racing, was a 10-time Santa Maria Speedway track champion, and had more than 100 career wins to his name. The loss of his right leg to cancer in 1989 didn’t deter him from his passion for driving as he continued to win one race after another, using a modified gas pedal.

Dan died of cancer in November of 1993, one month after winning his record 10th Santa Maria Speedway Track Championship.

The Speedway’s annual Danny Simkins Memorial Race is dedicated to the man who helped put the Santa Maria Speedway on the map.

Other memorial races include

WWW.RACESANTAMARIASPEEDWAY.COM‌

The Santa Maria Speedway celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014. the annual Doug Foot, Bud Stanfield and Don Roberts memorials.

Walt James, who at one time had served at president of the California Racing Association, helped lay out the one-third mile banked clay surfaced oval. The track, with

clay used from a natural vein on the property, is acclaimed by many to have one of the best racing surfaces in California.

Over the years, the Santa Maria Speedway has hosted some major Sprint Car and Midget shows which

included drivers who ultimately competed in the Indianapolis 500. George Snider, Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell, Bill Vucovich II, John Andretti, Jan Opperman and Bubby Jones were a few of the greats to move on to Indy.

In 1920s, Hancock helped launch Community Orchestra of Santa Maria I‌

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n 1925, local musicians met frequently at Robert Easton’s home.

Although they had no intentions of expanding into a full-fledged orchestra, they had a change of heart when Capt. G. Allan Hancock purchased the Santa Maria Valley Railroad and brought William Edson Strobridge, a member of his business staff, here to help organize the business.

For many years, Strobridge had been the business manager for the Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles, and had also served as manager of the L.A. Symphony Orchestra. He was not only a director, but he also played the piano.

Hancock, who played the cello with many musical groups in the L.A. area, was delighted to find the nucleus of a musical organization in Santa Maria.

After sitting in with the group at Easton’s home, Hancock proposed the formation of an orchestra.

Learning that the Minerva Club was trying to finance the building of a club house, he volunteered to bring in a quintet and soloist from L.A. to give a benefit performance.

From all reports, the concert was a success, with Hancock playing several selections on his cello, Genevieve Sink playing the flute and Strobridge at the piano.

The event proved to be the springboard that launched the Community Orchestra of Santa Maria. In a short time, there were 40 musicians playing under Strobridge’s baton with Sydney Peck, an accomplished violinist, acting as his assistant.

Sponsored by Hancock, the first Community Sing took place Jan. 3, 1926, when more than 800 Santa Marians filled the high school auditorium to sing both old and popular songs, under the direction of Hugo Kirschofer, one of the best-known directors on the Pacific Coast. The singers were accompanied on the piano by Santa Maria’s Frank Hayes.

Max Donner, a well-known violinist and member of the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra, provided the singers with a special treat, thus rounding out the concert.

The success of this event was monumental, resulting in the community clamoring for more.

As the year progressed and the community’s interest in the Community Orchestra grew, other concerts were given by the group, all without charge. Four months later, under the sponsorship of the Harmony Club, and with A. Rae

COURTESY SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL MUSEUM‌

Cellist Capt. G. Allan Hancock, who had performed with many musical groups in the Los Angeles area, started the Santa Maria Community Orchestra.

Condit of L.A. as leader, another concert was presented.

As the year progressed and the community’s interest in the Community Orchestra grew, other concerts were presented, all without charge.

Strobridge worked his group, always striving to give his musicians incentive to grow by providing music that was more interesting and difficult than anything that they’d done before.

In the meantime, Benedict Bantly, a man of exceptional musical ability, who had come to Santa Maria to take charge of the music department at the high school, was named concert master for the coming season. His three children, Ben, Charlotte and Mark, all violinists, joined the orchestra and J.M. Boothe became the new accompanist.

When the newly organized orchestra began having problems with musicians not returning to play during the following season, Strobridge solved one problem, when he was short a bass player, by recruiting George Gibbs to fill the vacancy.

It made little difference that the man had never played a string in-

strument in his life. The fact that he had accompanied his wife to every rehearsal was proof to Strobridge that a musical interest existed. With practice and perseverance, Gibbs became one of the most faithful members of the orchestra.

The orchestra gave its first concert of the year (again with no admission charge) in November of that year at the high school, with Lillian E. Ferguson as soprano soloist, Mary Angell as accompanist and Benedict Bantly and William Strobridge as piano soloists.

Again, when the members saw how enthusiastically the concert was received by the community, they felt that the presentation of an opera, something never before offered in this area, would be a success.

However, the group was experiencing financial problems that were beginning to mushroom.

Up until this time, Hancock had loaned all of the music from his private library while the postage, advertising and stenographic expenses had been met by either L.C. Palmtag or Bob Easton. In addition, the bank had lent the orchestra money with which to pur-

chase new instruments and, since such loans put the group “in the red,” they needed to be paid off.

The time had come for the group to start charging admission.

In preparing for a December production of “Hansel and Gretel,” Ethel Pope’s class in play production, took charge of staging and assisted with the makeup.

Other members of the community and teaching staff used their talents and time to help make this production a success.

The project hit a snag when the State Department of Labor informed the group that, since children under the age of 12 years were appearing in this production and no one had yet applied for a permit, they were in violation of the law. However, that problem was soon worked out when attorney Fred Goble stepped in and negotiated successfully with the Department of Industrial Relations at the State Bureau of Labor offices in Santa Barbara, and the show went on.

A matinee performance was given in the high school auditorium to a full house of students who were charged 25 cents admission. Margaret Konarsky played the part of Hansel and Olive Smith played Gretel.

Wesley Hatch played Peter, the Broom Maker, Dorothy Schenck played Gertrude, His Wife and Arnold Bowhay played The Dew Fairy. In addition to the ballet of 14 angels and chorus of 20 little gingerbread children, an orchestra of 48 provided the musical setting of this delightful opera.

When the second performance was held two days later to a sellout crowd, the admission charge had increased to $1.

The audience was thrilled and felt that no professional production could have been better After the last performance, when the Eastons invited the entire group of performers to be their guests at the Santa Maria Club for refreshments and a social hour, about 150 people showed up. F.J. Goble, the first president of the Community Orchestra of Santa Maria, acted as toastmaster for the evening.

The group left that night feeling that, although they’d all worked hard to accomplish the highly successful presentation, something akin to a real community spirit had been aroused.

As they left that night, Easton announced that rehearsals for the orchestra would resume on Jan.9, 1928.

With a seating capacity of about 2,000, the track continues to pack in the racing fans from throughout the area from the first of April to the middle of November. Special events bring in people from throughout California.

Innkeepers, stagecoach drivers faced bandits

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he business of innkeeper and stagecoach driving in the late 1800s was not for the faint of heart as both occupations often proved to be mighty dangerous ways of making a living. The newspapers were often filled with stories of one incident after another.

According to a story in the Oct. 7, 1875, edition of the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, “a stage was robbed at the Last Chance Station on Tuesday night when a masked man covered the driver and ordered him to throw off the box.” It went on to say that the driver had seen two more masked men standing back in the shadows. When the sheriff of Monterey County, who had just gotten off the stage and was walking a short distance behind the stage, fired his gun at the robbers, they dropped the box.

“About a mile further on three shots were fired at the sheriff, who had mounted the seat beside the driver.”

Antonio Maria Quate Villa recalled how dangerous it was to travel alone through the hills.

“One time Bill Foxen escorted me over the San Marcos (Pass) when I was on my way to Santa Barbara,” he said. “When we arrived at the inn on the Pass, we stopped for coffee and the proprietor asked if we had any money. I was taken aback by this question. I told him I would not have ordered if I had not had the money to pay him, and I threw a $20 gold piece on the counter.

“He immediately served us coffee and became very courteous,” he continued. “As soon as he was satisfied as to our identity, he went to a wood box in the back of the stove and took a sack of gold and silver from beneath the wood. He gave me change from it and said that there were a lot of holdups going on, and it was best to know your guests before you let them know that you had money around.

“He also said that many people stopped and asked for food and drink but had no money for payment.

“I remember a stage holdup in 1873 which took place about 1½ miles south of La Graciosa, right on the summit,” Antonio Maria Quate Villa said.

Please see BANDITS, Page S16

S16 | Friday, September 21, 2018

HEART OF THE VALLEY

SANTA MARIA TIMES

Pilots From S3

49 cadets, 33 graduated.

Although the school had a chaplain, it had no official chapel.

However, the chaplain was always ready for private consultation.

Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, and by Dec. 11, the U.S. was at war with both Japan and Germany.

Stearman PT-13A airplanes were lent to the contract schools for use in training the cadets, but the responsibility for all maintenance work on the planes was left to the schools.

Although authorization for expenditures for operations and activities was given under War Department contracts, Hancock privately furnished most of the money.

Until adequate barracks could be built, some of its cadets lived in the neighboring town of Betteravia, located seven miles from the school.

An increase in enrollment necessitated a tremendous expansion of the school’s facilities requiring the college to take on its share of the load by increasing the size of the barracks, mess halls and hangers. By April of 1942, after facilitating all of the government’s requirements, Hancock’s college took on a new look. In addition, two new hangars were built to house the additional planes acquired by the school.

With airplanes becoming major offensive and defensive weapons of unlimited power, it soon became evident that superiority in air power would swing the balance that would ultimately decide the length and outcome of the war.

The 63 military contract schools led the way.

When the Selective Service began making inroads on the civil-

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO‌

The entrance gate to the Hancock College of Aeronautics is shown during World War II. ian personnel, all of whom were eligible for the draft, the school began to look elsewhere for help.

On Oct. 15, 1942, the first women were employed at the college.

By mid-1943, the Army Air Corps had become an offensive weapon of unparalleled strength and power and had well-justified all of the hopes placed in it. With trained men and mighty planes, plus the determination to win, the world had never seen such power.

By the end of 1943, the tide was definitely turning in U.S. favor.

In February of 1944, a notice was received from the commanding general of the 9th Service Command to discontinue the acceptance of applications for transfer to the Army Air Corps.

The “hammer” was going to fall, but when?

Thus began a rush of instructors requesting to be released in order to obtain other positions and avoid the draft.

The question of why the school was closing when the war wasn’t over was answered by a letter to Hancock from the Army Air Force Training Command in Fort Worth, Texas. In short, pilots who were better trained were not being killed in such great numbers and there was no longer a need for contract pilot schools.

The letter went on to express the deep and sincere appreciation “for the sound and aggressive training conducted there.”

During the next few months, personnel from all departments

jumped in to help in the closing out of each department in preparation of the final closing.

However, the lack of personnel to accomplish this was acute.

The first Primary Training Plane was flown out June 21, 1944, with the remaining planes leaving three to five at a time, with some of the college civilian instructors making up the rest of the formation.

When there were no more pilots at the school, they were borrowed from Santa Maria Air Field.

The last of the primary trainers was flown out June 26, 1944, and Hancock’s contract with the government was terminated on June 30, 1945.

During the five years that the civilian schools had been in op-

Blochman City

Founding

From S12

From S14

finished the nine other structures with no help.

Although the city was dedicated in 1931, the project encountered a major problem when rain threatened to damage some of the lots.

After deciding that they needed better curbstones, the students wrote letters asking for donations to major cement companies in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Within a week, they received 60 sacks of cement to complete their first public works project.

Major seed companies and nurseries provided the materials to keep the city’s gardens and park green for years, while mail order houses, department stores and factories from coast to coast shipped free rugs, venetian blinds, fireplaces, curtains, groceries and other necessary goods to the town. Some traveling salesmen had standing orders

seat in Santa Barbara.

During those early years, the Santa Maria Valley was a broad expanse of flat, unbroken land with virtually no trees, and the prevailing winds from the coastal area had uninterrupted sway. Wagon trails were full of chuckholes and wheels often got mired down too deep to move in the drifting sand. During the rainy season, Port Harford was completely inaccessible when the Santa Maria River was on a rampage.

The Thomas Wilson family, as well as the Bradleys, Ben Turman, Joseph Lockwood and the George Washington Battles family were some of the town’s earliest settlers.

Cary Calvin Oakley, William Smith, Martin Luther Tunnell, Francis Marion Bryant and the Trott family were just a few of those who came to take up homesteads in the barren wasteland of the Santa Maria Valley.

By 1880, the population of Central City was nearly 300 and the town continued to grow.

In 1879, when Miller and Lovett’s Merchandise Store on the northeast corner of Main and Broadway sold out to Samuel Kriedel and Jonas Cassner, the name was changed to Cassner and Kriedel. Later that year, when Marks Fleisher came to Central City and bought out the Cassner interests, the name was changed to Kriedel and Fleisher General Merchandise. In addition to the company selling goods generally sold in a country store, they were Wells Fargo agents and also did business for several insurance companies as well as acting as agents for the purchase of all heavy farm machinery. The upper floor of the wooden building was used as a Masonic Hall.

On the same block on East Main Street, other buildings were built, including John Crosby’s Central City Hotel. This small, one-story building con-

Baseball From S13

Despite their heavy credentials, the All Stars failed to impress the local semi-pros with their record.

Les Webber, himself a former pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers, set the pace. Like clockwork, he fanned three of the Star in the first inning.

Lemon, though, was demonstrating his stuff on the mound as he whiffed Anderson, Bonetti, Brock and Rabourn successively in the first and second innings.

And then the man began to lose control.

With Simas on first base, Webber singled into left field for the first hit off Lemon, and before long the bases were loaded. When Will Brown came up to bat, the fans were on their feet. After fouling off a fast ball, he swung from the heels at lemon’s next offering.

An electrified audience watched the ball sail up, up and away clear over the left field wall. Four runs

Bandits From S15

“The robber got away with the strong box. He placed two dummies with sticks instead of guns, one on each side of the road, pointing toward the stage as it passed. It was dark, so the trick worked perfectly. He yelled to his dummy men not to shoot until he gave the order, and he stuck up the stage, got the strongbox and ordered the driver to move on.

“In 1880, two stages were robbed in one day at the foot of the San Marcos Pass.

“A stage going north and one coming south were robbed at about the same place. Both strongboxes

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO, SANTA MARIA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM‌

Blochman School is shown in an undated photo. to call on Blochman City at least once a year to check on the new city’s needs.

The general store, where the students alternated as being managers and clerks, proved to be the most popular place in town. Students were allowed to purchase any items on the shelf on sale days, using paper money and cardboard coins, manufactured under Full-

er’s direction and control.

The shelves of the store were stocked with real groceries donated by various wholesale houses throughout the country, with many of the items specially packed in miniature. At least once during the school year, the town’s store employees toured the big markets in Santa Maria, looking for new merchandising ideas.

dented the dish and the Indians had a 4-0 lead.

At the top of the sixth, the All Stars began to fight back, but a spectacular one-handed catch off the right field wall by big Hank Bonetti stifled their threat. Once again Bonetti showed his stuff when he headed for the fence and plucked a ball hit by Ray Boone of the All Stars off the wall with a high-reaching gloved hand.

Going into the top of the ninth, the fans were whooping and hollering as the Indians were ahead 4-1. It was then that things began to get hot. With two men on base, 2nd baseman Cole hit the 2nd double of the night, thus bringing two men home and closing the Indians 4-3.

When first baseman Stevens smashed one high and far into center field, the crowd groaned.

The Indians’ center fielder Rabourn hustled clear over to the light pole 400 feet from home plate, leaped into the air, and when he came down to earth he was holding the ball in his glove.

Through the years Santa Maria has given unending support to the Indians, and townspeople have not only seen the team compete in the semi-professional World Series in Wichita, Kansas, but have also seen a number of players go on to the big leagues, beginning with Les Webber, who signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1941. Since that time, the major league teams, such as the Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, California Angels, Milwaukee Brewers, New York Mets, Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners have all drawn from the ranks of “The Big Red Machine.”

Today, almost 66 years after the fact, fans are still talking about the night that the Big Red Machine defeated the professional All Stars baseball team, 4-3.

However, time has brought with it many changes and the Santa Maria Indians team is no more.

and valuables were taken. When one lady complained that the robber was taking all her money, he gave some of it back to her.”

When regular mail service was established along the coast, soldiers who left San Francisco and San Diego met at Nipomo to exchange mail being carried by horseback.

At first, envelopes were not commonly used. Instead, a sheet of paper was folded, sealed with wax and the address was written on the back side of the sheet.

In 1855, after a visit to the coast, William C. Jones wrote on behalf of California residents to Postmaster General James Campbell and urged him to establish a weekly mail service to replace the haphazard

deliveries by steamer and riders.

Within five years, both stage and mail service was being offered three times a week from San Francisco to Los Angeles. By 1862, mail was being delivered daily.

W.N. Ballard, with headquarters at El Alamo Pintado (later Ballard), was an agent of Pacific Coast State Lines, which operated in this area.

The first stages to serve as passenger and mail carriers were large enough to seat about 16 passengers both inside and on top.

Since the roads were rough, the driver had to rely on the horses at night, and even though the coach had two lanterns located up front over the wheels, they didn’t provide much light. The visibility was

bad on clear nights, but impossible during rainy weather.

Stage stops were a convenient 15 miles distance apart, the distance that a six-horse team could, depending on the terrain, travel at a full gallop. Routes varied considerably through the years. In 1867, there was a stage station located at the Suey Crossing in Santa Maria, and later, at La Graciosa.

At one time, the stage route followed the Santa Maria River and went south through Foxen Canyon to the stagecoach station at Benjamin Foxen’s place.

John Waugh, of Los Olivos, was one of the old time stagecoach drivers, as were John Stone, John Coleman and Jim Meyers. Whatever the time of day, as soon as a

eration, the job of training an Air Force superior to the enemy was a tough, tedious and costly operation. However, the speed and precision by which it was accomplished shocked the world, and most of all, the enemy.

By the time World War II ended in 1945, civilian school contractors had trained more than 200,000 pilots for the Army Air Corps, thereby saving the government $1 billion in that particular phase of the war effort.

Thousands of men in the Flight Training Command installations, having passed through the greatest training program ever attempted, went on to take their places as an integral part of the greatest flying team the world had ever seen.

tained a dining room, kitchen and only four bedrooms. Business must have been good as his bedrooms had increased to 20 by early 1883. Other buildings on this block included a butcher shop, a restaurant and several saloons.

By 1880, the Goodwin and Bryant Mercantile and post office had located on the southwest corner. T.A. Jones and Son owned a cabinet shop on South Broadway where they sold hardware, tin goods, cabinets and coffins.

Also included on the same block were Charles Sedgwick’s meat market and a music hall. The Santa Maria Times started in a wooden building in 1882 and the McElhaney Hall was used as a meeting place.

In the same block on West Main Street were the Santa Maria Market, as well as the Eagle Drug Store, Newman’s Harness Shop, the Boots and Shoes Shop, the Santa Maria Hair Dressing Saloon and the Morris and the Utley Millinery Shop.

In the early 1880s, Alfred Weilheimer and Samuel Coblentz formed a partnership and purchased the Kaiser Brothers Merchandise Store on the northwest corner of West Main Street and Broadway. In 1891, L.M. Schwabacher bought out Weilheimer’s interest, and the two men operated Schwabacher and Coblentz until they retired in 1932. Other buildings in that block in the 1870s and early ‘80s included the W.R. Gwen Millinery Shop, The Farmer’s Produce Exchange and the Heller Building with rooms to let out on the top floor.

Life moved along, with people moving in and out of Central City and generally trying to make a living.

Reuben and Tom Hart, who moved here in 1875, built a large building which they used as an extensive blacksmith and machine shop. In 1879, the brothers broke up their partnership and Tom returned to Guadalupe.

Reuben, though, had vision and the means with which to see them through, and Central City was never to be the same.

change of horses was made, the driver had to take off. His responsibility to get the mail through at the greatest of speeds superseded all others.

During Waugh’s time, a run from Mattei’s Tavern to Santa Barbara took about six hours.

Drivers were instructed not to fight a potential robbery. With the first demand, “Put ‘em up! Throw off the box,” the driver did as he was told.

Stages carried passengers and mail across the Santa Maria Valley for 20 years, until the coming of the Narrow Gauge Railroad in 1882, but continued riding the gap from Los Olivos to Santa Barbara until the coming of the Southern 00 1 Pacific Railway.