[Noozhawk’s note: Sixth in a series. Click here for previous columns.]
In previous columns on El Presidio de Santa Bárbara, readers have learned about its history, including key events and people who helped establish the Spanish outpost that eventually would become the town of Santa Barbara.
The fact that the presidio to this day remains the center of Santa Barbara is a plus and a minus, one might say, in terms of preserving and rebuilding it.
I am reminded of the ancient town of Herculaneum, which was buried under volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and then had a later town built over sections of it. Residents of Ercolano were not too keen on archaeologists uprooting the modern town to uncover the past.
Similarly, the presidio project in Santa Barbara was to have its detractors who were not too keen on the idea of having their businesses and residences displaced to rebuild a fort from the 18th century.
This, however, was not on the mind of Pearl Chase and other enthusiasts who proceeded to found the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation in 1963.
In fact, in 1957, Chase was in contact with state officials looking into the possibility of having the presidio designated a state historic park. She learned early on that what was required was a feasibility study identifying the site as historically significant and worthy of becoming a historic park.
Chase convinced the California Division of Beaches and Parks Department, the forerunner of California State Parks, to assign a historian to undertake the study: Glenn Price, at the time a park historian, who later would become a history professor at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park.
The 1959 document, “The Santa Barbara Presidio: A Report on the Presidio of Santa Barbara,” turned out to be just what was needed for the enthusiasts who wanted to rebuild the Presidio. It gave a glowing review of the downtown site and emphasized the fact that presidio history was an under-interpreted part of California’s early Spanish heritage.
I certainly would be curious to know if Chase was looking over Price’s shoulder during this process of determining the feasibility of rebuilding the presidio. Basically, Chase now had what she needed to convince park department administrators and legislators that the presidio should be declared a historic park.
After the completion of the Price report, a next step for the advancement of the presidio roject was creating a nonprofit organization to support the park. Chase had articles of incorporation and bylaws prepared and officially established the aforementioned Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation.
Among the signers of the document were leading citizens of Santa Barbara, including bankers, a few wealthy people and Tom Storke, the publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press and a descendant of José Francisco Ortega, the presidio’s first comandante.
The SBTHP’s first president was Judge John Rickard, a former city attorney and mayor who was a descendant of Don José de la Guerra y Noriega. One of the first acts of the organization’s board was to purchase El Cuartel from a local Boy Scout troop and then donate it the state to form El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Park, in 1964.
The early years of SBTHP were devoted primarily to gradually purchasing parcels of land that made up the presidio’s original footprint. Of the many people involved in this process, besides Chase, two of the most important were William F. Luton and Jeremy Hass.
Very quietly, as properties became available, the trust would approach owners and make purchase offers. Luton — SBTHP’s second board president, the owner of KEYT News and, like Storke, an Ortega descendant — would at his own expense service the mortgages of properties the trust acquired.
Hass, a young attorney who became involved with the trust in 1964, researched deeds to help locate properties that contained foundations of the original presidio buildings. He would then put together real estate deals, some quite complex, involving exchanges.
At the same time, if slowly at first, the State of California would acquire certain SBTHP-owned properties, providing funding for the trust to use to buy other properties.
Hass’ father, John Hass, was politically connected in Sacramento as a confidant of Gov. Pat Brown and his successor, Gov. Ronald Reagan, and those connections were instrumental in securing a state commitment to create the park.
By 1981, the year I began at SBTHP, nearly half of the presidio footprint had been acquired from willing sellers as had — thanks to Hass — a right of refusal to purchase the Rochin Adobe at 820 Santa Barbara St.
To my mind, this was a monumental achievement, and I soon became a presidio enthusiast myself.
My respect for the people and the project deepened when I met and came to know Richard Whitehead, who first got involved with SBTHP as a presidio volunteer in 1969 after retiring as the county’s planning director, a position he had held since shortly after World War II. He maintained a fascination with the presidio project as he served on the SBTHP board, including two terms as president.
By the 1970s, most of the presidio’s foundations had been located although not accurately recorded on a map. Whitehead, who earned his master’s degree in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took on this task.
Using his own personal surveying equipment, Whitehead created a map with the presidio foundations laid over Santa Barbara’ s modern streets. This accurate map is still used today in all park materials.
His interest piqued, Whitehead also decided to take on documenting the presidio’s original construction and set about collecting 18th century Spanish documents available at The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. He had hundreds of pages printed from microfilm, then enlisted a stable of people to translate them. These documents are now in binders in the Presidio Research Center.
Whitehead also prepared a presidio history manuscript that SBTHP published in 1996 under the title Citadel on the Channel: The Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara, Its Founding and Construction, 1782-1798. He published other works related to the presidio’s history, and gifted to the research center all of his books and papers.
Another early star in the SBTHP firmament was Russell Antonio Ruiz, a descendant of Comandante Felipe Antonio de Goicoechea. Having served in the Navy as an aerial photographer, Ruiz retired to Santa Barbara, where he reignited his fascination with his hometown’s early Spanish history.
Mention of Ruiz’s work as an aerial photographer relates to the wonderful artwork he created of conjectural images of the presidio. He also painted depictions of Chumash Indian villages in the area.
Almost all of his images were produced from an aerial perspective. Had Ruiz done nothing else, these creations would have secured his place as a major contributor to the presidio’s interpretation.
But he did more, including sharing his prodigious research and stories with presidio volunteers, whose numbers swelled. Partly motivated by Ruiz, these volunteers also started an archaeological program that was overseen by a team of amateurs and, later, by UC Santa Barbara professionals.
As I mentioned, I can’t possibly name all of the people from those days starting in the 1960s but a few others included WWII veteran Bud Decker, who died just recently. Decker organized one of the digs and later became a member of the presidio soldiers group. After the SBTHP acquired replica cannons, it was Decker who built their carriages.
Another volunteer was Michael Hardwick, whose wife, Paula, also gave many hours of her time. In 1969, Hardwick had just retired from the Navy and was about to begin anthropology studies at UCSB. He caught the presidio bug and helped found a soldier re-enactment group in the 1990s.
Hardwick also undertook a major study of the presidio’s arms and armament and has produced an important document on the subject, worthy of being published some day.
Santa Barbara High School teacher Virginia Scott was another person I much admired and, over the years, she frequently brought her high school students to the site to work in its archaeology.
In the 1970s, perhaps the biggest development for SBTHP was the donation of the historic El Paseo complex to the organization, which Hass had a key role in securing.
I hate to tease the reader by again putting off the rest of the story, but it is important to tell it more fully because the property’s eventual sale with a protective easement was a long and complicated process. In some quarters, it was very controversial.
— 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.