A posting on the Tribune’s website says the church will celebrate its 80th Anniversary Sunday April 19, 2009.

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One of the places I would turn back time to see would be the Ramona Hotel.
Four stories tall, the building covered the block between Higuera and Marsh Streets and fronted Essex St. (Now Johnson Ave.) The Hotel had its own railroad spur, a saloon, ballroom and several drawing rooms.
The Hotel opened October 3, 1888 with a grand ball, men wearing swallow tail coats and diamond studs, women in silk and lace. The party wouldn’t last, just over 17 years later the hotel would lie in ashes around a lone chimney.
The Ramona rose in the aftermath of an 1886 fire that devastated downtown. Destroyed were the Andrews Hotel, Bank of San Luis Obispo, the main livery stable and a number of smaller shops. Investors decided a new luxury hotel was needed and two years after the fire downtown the new hotel opened near the railroad tracks. The gala opening was reported, amid a sea of ads for other hotels, on the lead spot for local news at the time, page 3, of The Tribune. A sign of the importance of the event was the engraving that ran with the article. In this era images with news stories were quite rare.
Investors included the Southern Pacific Railroad who had high hopes of attracting customers to the sparsely populated west coast. Ironically when the railroad conquered Cuesta Grade in 1894 there was less reason for people to stay in town on their travels. This combined with a financial panic and depression hurt profits and the hotel closed the day after Christmas 1894 and did not reopen for 6 months.

Quoting a story by Maggy Stephenson in the Telegram-Tribune May 10, 1947 ,

The Ramona reflected both the architectural indecision of the time, and the veranda-society of pioneer California tourists.
Basically a huge but rather unpretentious clapboard building, eclectic touches were spread on its surface like meringue on a pie.
The steep roof of the Swiss chalet; stringcourses from Italy’s renaissance; half-timber from medieval Nurnberg; chimneys from Tudor England; and little turrets, French or faintly onion-shaped from the Czar’s Russia.

A room cost $2.50 a day and up and included meals. My favorite part, Stephensen said a photograph of the common rooms shows that entertainment was provided via pianos, banjos, mandolins and guitars.

The dining room was 60 by 80 feet with a 24-foot ceiling and a stuffed mountain lion guarded the lobby. Long before the Madonna Inn, cupids adorned the walls of the Ramona. President William McKinley spoke from the balcony during a whistle stop tour of the west coast.

The era ended November 10, 1905 when an 2 a.m. kitchen fire spread. The night clerk ran from room to room rousing the 250 guests. The building was so far from town that no others were destroyed though several were threatened. The building was insured for $18,000.

By this time custom was to report the big news of the day on the front page. Remarkably the morning paper had a brief the morning of the fire on the front with more details to follow the next day. The Morning Tribune concluded with two boosterish sentences.

There is a golden opportunity for some person, or persons to build at once a big hotel in the business section of the city. San Luis Obispo is growing rapidly and such a hotel would pay well.

Taken on the steps of the Ramona Hotel, Nov. 24, 1896. Swiss envoy minister J. B. Pioda visits San Luis Obispo. Front row from left, starting from the young man in gray suit holding hat, Arthur Baur, A. Tognazzini (standing on second step), J. B. Pioda, A Borel (light trousers), G. A. Berton and Henry Brunner. Second row, starting with the two small boys at left, Louis and Arnold Donati, Pio Taminelli (next to boy in dark suit:, Mr. Antognini, publisher of Swiss newspaper, “El-vezia,” and standing with arms akimbo, Sam Donati (light suit); three unidentified men, one of which has light gray suit and white beard; A. Vignier (bearded with sideburns), A. Monotti and George Cavalli. Third row, starting with man with flag, M. Righetti, Mrs. B. Pezzoni, two unidentified men, one slightly behind the other, B. G. Tognazzini, undentified man standing slightly back and looking of to his left, Peter Tognazzini, G. Fanciola, Dante Muscio, J. B. Bonetti, standing with thumb tucked in pants pocket and loking off to his right, Peter Zanoli, Robert Righetti and a Mr. Palmer. The picture was printed in the Centurama edition of the Telegram-Tribune in 1956. The picture was loaned to the paper by Sam Borradori, who also made the identifications after considerable research.

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An Atascadero Republican, Mrs. Hallett is seeking election to a second term in the 16th Assembly District.
Thursday’s event turned out to be as much a celebration of the voters decision to limit property taxes through Proposition 13 as it was a campaign rally for Mrs. Hallett, who is considered a shoo-in for re-election by political observers.
***
Reagan got a standing ovation with his response to a question of whether he planned to run for president in 1980: “I haven’t closed the door yet, so stay loose.”

Photos were by Thom Halls

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Photos from the vault was born a little over a year ago on November 13, 2007.
People who know me will tell you I have trouble remembering birthdays, so it’s a belated happy birthday.
Since then there have been 81,067 page views on the original and current site from all over the world. There are 138 posts and 301 comments on the blog, oops this makes 139 posts.
Our web guru Danny Thorogood has added a new feature (see the flags?) to the site, a translation program to help international readers.
I am looking for a local sponsor for the blog, contact me if you are interested in reaching a worldwide audience interested in photography. dmiddlecamp(at)thetribunenews.com

The map above is generated by StatCounter, the service lists searches that bring readers to the website and what the most popular pages are from one day to the next. Still no visits from Antarctica. Stupid penguins.
It does not say who you are individually but as a group popular search topics include Vietnam, railroad, fashion, abalone, Cambria radar station, Huffington, telephone operators, 1960’s fashion, Santa Barbara oil disaster.
Two items are probably not a surprise to you, Google is the favorite search engine and Internet Explorer is the favorite web browser.
This information and the comments you write help me decide what future material to look for.
Several folks have recently asked for very specific photos or stories and unfortunately the way our files are (dis)organized from the 1960’s there are very low odds for a specific story. An example, I was on the lookout for 6 months to find a photo of the operators in the Pacific Telephone exchange and when the negatives turned up they were in a sleeve marked Pacific TelLibrary13 Jan. I still haven’t determined the year, or found the article but thanks to comments by readers Hazel Culbertson Daniels and Lucille (Serpa) Ferraro we got a chance to meet some of the people who worked there.
The blog is regularly improved by your comments so thanks to all who have contributed and please if you have something to add this is your place. I am grateful that readers have found the blog interesting enough to post comments. It started as a photo and a couple of sentences but you have given it the energy to grow into something more. Share it with your friends if you find something worthwhile.

What three major topics are you interested in seeing covered this year?

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This view of Highway 1 with Cal Poly in the background shows how much has changed in 42 years. The highway has a center divider and the university has a library and performing arts center, recreation center and other buildings. I should have climbed a little further up the hill but now the side road is part of a gated community restricting access.

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Time gets measured in different scales. Geologic time runs in cycles with spans of hundreds, thousands or millions of years, hard to put in a human context because the Earth’s pace is not a human pace.
A few signposts of 1973: Richard Nixon was president, and the jaws of the Watergate scandal were closing on him. Telegram-Tribune cost 15 cents and did not have a Sunday edition. Graphics were drawn by hand then photographed, not created on a computer. Thrifty was the name of a drug store. The nuclear power industry answered to the Atomic Energy Commission.
Almost exactly 35 years ago the discovery of what would undersea fault a mile off the coast was reported in the then Telegram-Tribune.
The United States Geological Survey and the AEC had commissioned a study of the seabed off of Diablo Canyon after scientist Gary Greene had discovered an active fault offshore from Davenport in Santa Cruz. PG&E dropped plans to build a nuclear power there in the wake of that report.
Staff writer Jim Hayes quoted Greene:
“Of course, PG&E had other problems there. There was the fault at Ano Nuevo and then they had a landslide.”
Later in the article the scientist spoke about the newly discovered fault,
“Length, becomes a critical factor, generally the longer the fault the more recent and active we think it is.”
A PG&E spokesman Frederick R. Draeger downplayed the discovery saying Diablo Canyon had been designed “to handle the greatest earthquake that could occur.”
In 1973 both units of the plant were expected to open within two years and the price tag stood at $650 million dollars. Both numbers would balloon as the plant was retrofitted in the wake of the discovery.

Today David Sneed has an article on a fault discovered about a mile offshore from the plant.

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November 1959
Though the writing on the print says 1949, this view of Monterey Street in San Luis Obispo is likely 10 years later. Both the Battle of Midway starring Cliff Robertson and the Crimson Kimono shared the bill on the Obispo Theater. They were released in 1959. The cars look like 1950’s era cars.
The Christmas decorations are up and every parking space is filled, parking meters are not visible in this image.
On the other side of the street the same J.P. Andrews building pictured in the Guy Crabb post stands at the corner of Osos and Monterey Streets. The block had filled in during the half-century.
State Farm Insurance and Blake Printery are about where Boo Boos Records are today and the Moose Lodge is just down the street.

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Carpenter on tower in Oceano.

Photos by Virgil Hodges, Courtesy of the Bennett-Loomis Archives

You may never have heard about Virgil Hodges, but you’ve probably seen his photographs. You may have old postcards with his photos of women wearing bathing suits in 1905 Oceano Beach. His images are in history books, seven warships running aground at Point Honda in 1923, the Santa Rosa breaking apart near the Point Arguello lighthouse in 1911, or Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet visiting Avila in 1908. Magazines and newspapers featured many of his photographs throughout the years – images of people, of floods and fires, and of everyday life on the Central Coast.

Photo archivist Gordon Bennett will present a talk on Hodges at the South County Historical Society IOOF’s Hall in Arroyo Grande Saturday Nov. 22, 2008 at 2 PM. Bennett remembers the stories behind the photographs from his close friendship with the photographer which lasted until Hodge’s death in the early 1990s 1975.

Born near on a farm near Arroyo Grande in 1879, Virgil Ulysses Hodges was the son of a Union Civil War veteran who named his son after Ulysses S. Grant. His sister Rose provided the necessary spark for Virgil’s life-long interest in photography. Rose had large box camera that she passed on to Virgil when she married. Virgil developed his skills quickly not only in taking pictures but in also developing and printing photographs.

Virgil Hodges moved to Lompoc after graduating from Arroyo Grande High School. He married Fae Elnora Winn and worked for the Lompoc Streets Department for thirty years, retiring in 1944. After his wife’s death in 1958, he moved to a cottage on Whiteley Street in Arroyo Grande.

“Get a good camera, learn how to use it and be there when things happen,” Hodges said. He followed that rule and visitors can see more than twenty of his enlarged photographs at the IOOF Hall, 128 Bridge Street in Arroyo Grande through December 14, 2008.
Other photographs on display include two Oceano Dunes Photo exhibits, one by Santa Barbara Photographer Robert Werling and the other by Pismo physician Billy Mounts. Museum hours are Fridays and Saturdays 1 – 5 PM, or by appointment in groups of four or more. For more information, please call 489-8282.

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July 15, 1971

Death penalty trials are grim stories.
Over the last 20 years I have worked at the paper I have covered portions of 3 of the 4 active county death row stories.

In 1971 there was a wave of 3 death penalty convictions within 9 months.
Joseph Deb Tregeagle was convicted of murdering a 17-year-old Van Nuys boy at Montaña de Oro State Park.

Quoting from staff writer Walt Beesley’s story,

While courthouse employees stared intently out of their windows, convicted murder Joseph Deb Tregeagle was led unceremoniously from the county jail Wednesday to a waiting sheriff’s car which whisked him away to San Quentin’s Death Row.
The route to San Quentin was the same taken by two other slayers convicted here within the last nine months.
Tregeagle’s predecessors were Andrew Herschel Gay, 26, of Fresno.
Gay was convicted last March of the slayings of Eve Hindin, 19, of Laurelton, N.Y. and John Volpi, 18, of Van Nuys, both hitchhikers.
Coincidentally, it was Ronald Allen Payton, another Van Nuys hitchhiker, who became Tregeagle’s victim.
Archa was convicted last December of the murders of a Shandon couple and their four-year-old daughter.

The picture here shows when the jail was under the old courthouse on Osos Street.
I am assuming the guy with the hat and cigarette holder was the reporter Walt Beesley.

There was no courtroom picture because cameras were not allowed in California courtrooms until the mid 1980’s. If you wanted a picture you had to wait outside the courthouse or the jail for the convict to be walked to the car.

For those researching the topic the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has a good overview of the history of the Death Penalty in California. Tregeagle was fortunate to be convicted when he was, according to the CDC website:
“In 1972, the California Supreme Court found that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the state constitution. As a result, 107 individuals had their sentences changed to other than death.”

Charles Manson and Tex Watson were among those with commuted sentences;
Manson and Watson have had parole hearings but are still in prison. At one
point Watson was incarcerated at CMC. Fellow Manson family member Bruce Davis is still at CMC and though he has had over a dozen parole hearings but has not been released. Tregeagle likely had his sentence commuted and was at
some point paroled.

Joseph Deb Tregeagle is a unique name and it turns up again in a ruling from February 1992 United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The criminal history appears to match and in this ruling Tregeagle is sentenced to 18 months in prison for possession of a firearm. He claimed took the gun from his nephew, preventing his nephew from doing harm with the gun. Appeals court judges upheld the conviction.

Times have changed and we have fewer death penalty cases today. The Tregeagle trial took about 5 days and he was bound for Death row a little over 7 months after the crime. Capital punishment trials now can take years to prepare and months to try. It isn’t that prosecutors have become softer.
There are now specific circumstances that must be met to qualify for capital punishment and more stringent procedures. Conviction is only the start of a long appeals process. The system has slowed down in the wake of revelations that courts have convicted and executed the innocent. This system also delays final judgment for the guilty.

San Luis Obispo County now has four men on death row:

As of midnight November 5, 2008 there were 628 condemned men in San Quentin
with 637 beds available. There were 15 condemned women at the Central California Women’s Facility with design capacity of 17.

Whether you are for or against the death penalty a report released in the summer of 2008 states that the largest and slowest death row in America has broken down costing taxpayers millions of dollars. Today more California death row inmates die of old age than execution.

Wayne Nicholls made the photos.

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Former owner Ross Humphrey, left, and tearful manager Kim Humphrey thanked staff Sunday at closing time as 105 year old local department store, Rileys closed for the last time.

January 31, 1993

Rileys department store was a major shopping destination for five generations.
They were the last department store downtown and the last independent. Both J.C. Penny’s (reduced to a catalog outlet) and Sears had left downtown for Madonna Plaza a few years before. Montgomery Wards and Woolworth’s were long gone. The store that covered the block of Chorro St. between Higuera and Marsh Streets was closing.

Carol Roberts wrote the story.

Employees at Rileys were somber throughout Sunday, saying goodbye to customers and ringing up the sales that ended 105 years of history.
The tears didn’t come until after the doors closed for the last time at 5 p.m., ending a weeklong going-out-of business sale at the store that had become an institution in San Luis Obispo.
Store manager Kim Humphrey served pizza and drinks to the 40 employees who were there at the end.
“I just want to say how much I appreciate all of your help,” she sobbed, “especially this last couple of months.”
Her father, Ross Humphrey of Atascadero, and his brother Robert Humphrey of San Luis Obispo, owned the store for 30 years. They sold it five years ago to the Charles Ford Co of Watsonville.
“This is sad as hell,” said Ross Humphrey, “not only for us but all the people who shop here.”
Rileys opened in 1887. His family bought it in 1945. He and his brother took over in 1955.

Many employees had worked for years at the store.
Charlotte Brown, a 17-year Rileys veteran was quoted:

“The Humphreys treated us like family”, she said. “They were always there when we needed them. They always made us feel important. They never looked down their noses at sales people. We were all equal.”

My sister helped pay for college working in the house wares department. The building was separate from the main store and money had to be sent up in a pneumatic tube to cashiers who would send back the change and receipt.

The advent of freeways tilted the retail playing field to nimble big national chains. Those who could make the move to suburban shopping centers and compete in the discount shopping environment thrived.
The death knell came in the form of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which heavily damaged the Watsonville area stores of Charles Ford Co. in October 1989 leading to bankruptcy.

Tom and Jim Copeland would buy the building.

What do you remember about Rileys?

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