[Noozhawk’s note: Ninth in a series. Click here for previous columns.]

Readers who have followed my recent Noozhawk columns on the controversy of the reconstruction of El Presidio de Santa Bárbara and the sale of El Paseo, might ask if there had been any “joy in Mudville” for me between 1981 and 1988.

In fact, the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation during this time established itself as the “Mud People,” as one of the board members called us.

As previously mentioned, on my arrival in 1981 the trust had been rebuilding the presidio padres’ quarters next to the chapel at 123 E. Canon Perdido. The building was dedicated on April 21, 1982, on the 200th anniversary of the presidio’s founding.

To this day, perhaps the most important event in the SBTHP’s history was about to commence: the reconstruction of the Presidio Chapel.

By 1982, a set of chapel reconstruction plans, created by architect Gil Sanchez, were submitted to California State Parks. Normally, a fully adopted general plan for a state park is required before any major projects may be undertaken. However, the parks department allowed the project to proceed before the general plan for El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park was adopted in 1988.

A small section of the foundation was constructed and the first bricks were laid in an April 1982 ceremony, but the reconstruction did not begin in earnest until 1983.

There were several reasons for how the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation got to that point, among the most important were the excavations that the presidio volunteers had overseen and undertaken from the 1960s to the 1980s. The volunteers had exposed the chapel’s original foundations, on which the chapel would be rebuilt.

The chapel had stood until the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake and there had been a watercolor painting of the chapel done in 1850.

California Conservation Corps members provided most of the labor for the Presidio Chapel reconstruction. Among those in the CCC photo op were project supervisors Mike Pownall and Guy Wilson, along with presidio descendant Mike Acosta, on crutches. (Bill Dewey photo)

Thus the foundation of the chapel had been established and its basic exterior appearance was also available, save for one feature: the bell tower, which probably had collapsed before the Tejon earthquake; another plan from around 1820 indicated the tower still existed at that time. The restoration committee decided to leave off the tower pending further research.

Other features of the chapel were described in two ground plans, one signed by presidio Comandante Felipe de Goicoechea and the other by then-Alta California Gov. Pedro Fages. Both plans were created at the end of the 1780s and are the two most detailed surviving plans of any presidio in California or the Southwest. SBTHP had done its research to get to the point of rebuilding the chapel.

For unanswered questions the committee consulted with art historian Norman Neuerburg, the person most knowledgeable about California’s Mission Period churches.

Because the watercolor showed a window above the church entrance, Neuerburg said that meant there had been a choir loft in the chapel. Another conundrum he solved was the slope of the chapel floor that appeared to be away from the altar. He explained that many of the mission churches did have floors just like it.

Neuerburg was also retained to design the chapel’s interior, which he did based on a detailed research paper he completed for the committee.

In the basement of Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church, Neuerburg located an original 1790s painting of Saint Barbara that had hung in the chapel; it was resurrected and given to SBTHP on permanent loan.

Neuerburg and volunteers painted the chapel’s wall decorations that are intact to this day. All of the hardware for the chapel was made by Moises Solis in a forge at Lompoc’s La Purísima Mission, which also is a state park, by the way.

Interestingly, the sanctuary of Neuerburg’s recreated Presidio Chapel interior adorns the cover of a 2001 book, The Spell of California’s Spanish Colonial Missions — a testament to the authentic feeling that his design captured.

Before Neuerburg’s design could be carried out, the chapel had to be rebuilt — all 30,000 adobe bricks of it.

SBTHP volunteer Richard Whitehead had met with the California Conservation Corps, a state agency created during the first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1970s. Nacho Piña, who was director of the CCC Center in Camarillo, committed to making the chapel a CCC legacy project, and he provided up to a dozen, sometimes more, California Conservation Corps members to assist with the reconstruction. Under the supervision of Mike Pownall and Rick McKinnie, the CCC members shouldered about 90 percent of the labor.

Nearly 30,000 adobe bricks were made in an open field next to the parking lot at the Santa Barbara Mission. Thanks to Ozzie DaRos, owner of Santa Barbara Stone, the soil for the bricks was hauled to the mission from a site on Upper State Street, then owned by General Telephone. The bricks then were placed on palettes and transported in DaRos’ trucks to the presidio.

The rebuilding took place between 1983 and 1985, and the chapel was rededicated on Dec. 12 in honor of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The extension of the chapel had also been celebrated on the same Feast Day in 1790. A bell tower was added to the chapel in 2001.

Fundraising had to be done to cover the salaries of the project supervisors and materials. Bricks had to be stabilized with emulsified asphalt, and that cost was partially covered by a grant from the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C. Rebar re-enforced walls also required funding sources.

SBTHP board member Julia Forbes sought gifts from private donors and began a buy-a-tile-brick program; I worked to secure grants from the Santa Barbara Foundation and the Ann Jackson Family Foundation, among others, and from various oil companies then drilling in our Santa Barbara Channel. I can remember small gifts that came in from one woman in the amount of $15 a month.

But most compelling of all was the contribution of the California Conservation Corps. Even after the chapel was finished, the CCCs stayed involved with the presidio project, working on archaeology and providing live-in interns who took care of day-to-day maintenance.

In recognition of their contributions, the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation installed a plaque on a boulder in front of the chapel. That plaque did not last and a new one has been created and is awaiting installation. I hope that happens very soon.

To answer the question about joy in Mudville, to be involved with this project did indeed bring me great satisfaction. It was wonderful to be part of rebuilding Santa Barbara’s first church. In fact, the decade that followed was a time of great progress of the presidio project and its many restorations, and school and interpretive programs. More on that in future columns.

— Jarrell Jackman is the former executive director of the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. After receiving his Ph.D. in history from UC Santa Barbara, he taught for six years in Europe and Washington, D.C. In 2015, he was honored as a knight of the Royal Order of Isabel la Católica by Spain’s King Felipe VI and was named an honorary state park ranger by the California State Park Rangers Association in 2016. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

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