In summarizing Jarrell Jackman’s new book, Santa Barbara’s Royal Presidio, I am reminded why Santa Barbara has consistently done preservation “right.”
In this instance the city’s partner was California State Parks. The upshot, over three decades, was El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park, appropriately located on the site of the original Presidio in the heart of downtown.
Jackman’s story touches on all aspects of the archaeology, environmental initiatives and history, and critically, constantly reminds the reader of the broad international focus involved.
Including the Santa Barbara Mission, the Santa Barbara County Courthouse and Presidio, Santa Barbara has three outstanding claims to a living history.
In Jackman’s account of the Presidio, he vividly describes the unique relationship that developed between colonizers from Spain and Mexico and the indigenous Chumash people.
This is a welcome perspective that provides a valuable counterpoint to the pervasive attitude at colleges and universities that Indians were everywhere exploited and had no say in their fate. In fact, the Chumash helped build the Presidio and, in later years, even formed auxiliary military units under Spanish command.
After 1820, California, as part of Mexico, did not maintain this initial relationship, and suffered, as a result, a violent revolt in 1824. In the present climate of opinion, it takes courage portraying the complexity of Spanish/Indian relations, and Jackman’s book does just that.
Further consider the mammoth task of building an adobe fort on the frontier. Here again, Jackman’s descriptions leave no doubt that only a cooperative relationship between the Spanish and Chumash would have succeeded.
It took several years to make and lay the bricks, adze the timbers, and fire thousands of tiles for roofing and floors. And to think that all of this was accomplished without the equipment we take for granted today.
It is no wonder Santa Barbara chose to rebuild the Presidio as a critical reminder of the city’s history.
Of course, the remembered visionary is Pearl Chase, who convinced the city to make Spanish architecture the bedrock of its recovery following the great earthquake of 1925.
The alternative, she warned, was a hodgepodge of ticky-tacky buildings, what James Howard Kunstler describes as “the geography of nowhere,” capped off by billboard-lined streets and fast-food restaurants.
Chase insisted on banning billboards, as well, confidently building even more support for her legacy achievement, the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation.
Its principal project, reconstructing the Presidio, would later fall to Jackman. A 1966 graduate of UCLA, his orientation to Santa Barbara history began on his being accepted into the doctoral program at UC Santa Barbara.
Researching German émigrés to California, Jackman was specializing in American Cultural History under the direction of UCSB history professor Harold Kirker. Drawn cross-country in 1971 by the History Department’s new graduate field in American Environmental History, I had elected to study under Roderick Nash.
In seminar, where Jackman took note of my writings on national parks, we realized we had parks in common.
Parenthetically, he has since visited all 282 California state parks and, among fellow contributors to the system such as Clint Eastwood and Walt Disney, been honored by the California State Park Rangers Association with its coveted Ranger Hat award.
In 1974, Jackman moved his family to Germany, intending to complete his dissertation while teaching for the military branch of the University of Maryland. It was a wonderful experience, he recalls, further allowing his immersion in European history.
Back in the United States, his doctorate in hand, he next spent several years in Washington, D.C., while his wife, Michele, worked at the Pentagon.
By then they had determined to return to California — and Santa Barbara. (Here I admit to being envious.)
In 1981, the Trust for Historic Preservation offered Jackman an appointment as project administrator and soon made him executive director.
Certainly, no recent Ph.D. was better prepared to reconstruct the Presidio, mindful of the research required in Spanish history. Having similarly immersed himself in the role of the Chumash in building the Presidio, Jackman was no less committed to expanding on that story.
Spain’s acknowledgment was especially memorable, both for Jackman and Santa Barbara. A most impressive emissary, Spain’s King Felipe VI, twice visited the city as prince, leading in 2016 to Jackman’s highest and proudest award: knighthood in the Order of Isabel la Católica.
How Jackman turned even that honor to the city’s credit would have delighted Chase to no end. Even when necessarily writing in the first-person he never lets readers forget his associates, taking us behind the scenes throughout the narrative to applaud the work of predecessors, donors, political leaders, colleagues, state park staffers, family and friends.
Naturally, he reserves special mention for his beloved “mudslingers,” among them members of the California Conservation Corps, who fashioned the thousands of adobe bricks required.
It is another timely reminder that the Presidio remains a community achievement, nobly advanced by citizen-volunteers.
Revealingly, in the storytelling of every culture, heroes prove their courage by undertaking a quest. The Presidio, if you will, symbolizes Santa Barbara’s quest for a living history.
The courage of those committed to the Presidio was repeatedly demonstrated as its walls re-emerged over many years.
Granted, some were opposed to the project. The point is that the Trust for Historic Preservation kept its focus. The Presidio was not just the birthplace of the city, but also a site of international interest, significance and value.
Remaining true to that broader mission helped quiet opponents, much as is the case today.
The question is: Will the vision last? Inevitably, that already depends on new recruits.
First they must be humbled by what their predecessors accomplished, no small ask in our narcissistic age.
No doubt, as Jackman proposes, there are many more adobe bricks to be made, offering the next generation of mudslingers a chance at “rightness,” provided they are taught community over self.
We may argue the facts of history, but this fact is rarely argued. Santa Barbara chose a joyful urban landscape resplendent in history and beauty both.
Now that parts of the city are turning dull and joyless (just look around), you can understand how critically important is Jackman’s book. This is your wake-up call, and from your Don Quixote, if I may be so bold.
For your quest to remain intact, you would do well to remember — and have your children remember — how and why it all began.