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Inside the Santa Ynez Valley Magazine Winter 2002 Edition
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History Museum
By Christine Beebe
 Leave behind your cell phones and your morning lattes for a while. Journey back through history to a time when a trip from Los Olivos to Santa Barbara took eight dusty bone-jarring hours on a stage pulled by a rugged team of horses. Begin at the beginning, when the Chumash wove intricate baskets and ground acorns with mortars and pestles. See the old sea chests, cannonballs and mission artifacts left by the Spanish who traveled here long ago.
Inhale the sweet smell of leather saddles used for decades by early ranchers and vaqueros who settled here and epitomized the lifestyle of the Old West. Inspect the intricate bridles, bits and spurs they made and used. Imagine a roundup in 1786 and hear the bleating calves being branded. Surround yourself with the accoutrements of a Pioneer household, and marvel at the effort required for even the simplest everyday chores.
Learn the hopes and dreams of the founders of the Valley's five towns. Then enter the crowning jewel of the museum, the Parks-Janeway Carriage House, and you will know why you came.
Preserved within the walls of these modest buildings is the history and essence of the people who settled and lived in the Santa Ynez Valley. This is the Santa Ynez Valley Historical Society Museum. First opening in a single room in 1961, it has continued to grow, evolve and improve over the years. Today it is a repository of memories for many older visitors, and an accessible window to a bygone era for younger generations.
It is fitting that today's bearded and blue-jeaned museum manager John Crockett is a bit of the Old West himself. Having worked at the museum for 14 years, he is a wealth of information about the exhibits, and is especially enthusiastic when he describes the museum's carriages. He has personally refurbished several of them, and also builds and drives his own. Somewhat reluctantly, he finally reveals that he is the great-great-grandson of the cousin of Davy Crockett.
Crockett is understandably proud of the carriages. They represent one of the finest collections of horse-drawn vehicles and accessories in the country. What sets the collection apart is that it features several beautifully preserved stage coaches including the Yosemite Stage, a large overland mail wagon, a Western style coach, a sightseeing stage, and a Wells Fargo Express. Not many museums have stages, Crockett says. Even the Gene Autry Museum has only one.
Being inside the lofty 7,000 square foot Carriage House is a bit breathtaking, and visitors tend to talk in whispers. The size of the carriages is what first impresses you. Many are towering behemoths of carefully-preserved wood and leather, with the rims of their spindled wheels as high as your chest. You can almost hear the pounding of hooves and the shouts of the drivers.
Many of the carriages came from John Mitchell, the founder of Los Rancheros Visitadores, who once used them for the group's annual rides. Others are from the collections of Los Adobes de los Rancheros and from Mrs. Betty Parks and Mrs. Elizabeth Janeway. These women also contributed the funds for building the carriage house in 1978. Perhaps as a tribute to a way of life once shared by a few prominent ranching families who settled here from the East Coast, the Carriage House was created in memory of Mrs. Parks' husband Tom, and Mrs. Janeway's father Fred Bixby. Both men were prestigious and well-known in the Valley, and avid carriage enthusiasts.
The newest addition to the museum is the Valley Room. Three years in the making, it is a splendid representation of the early days of the Valley's five towns, each distinct yet connected, arranged in the order of their founding.
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| The collections at the Historical Museum in Santa Ynez include rare Chumash baskets, right, and one of the finest carriage collections in the country. Museum manager John Crockett is a wealth of information about the carriages and coaches and enjoys sharing with visitors. |
Walking along a boardwalk, you pass facades designed from old photographs of real buildings that once stood in these towns, including a blacksmith shop, mercantile and train station.
Look through their windows to view artifacts, carefully selected to reflect the commerce, communication, transportation, family and community life of the times.
Through Ballard's windows you can see the Valley's first post office , a partitioned wood box that had been nailed to a tree in 1880. Behind Los Olivos' windows, you can see the register of the Los Olivos Hotel, established in 1892 when the narrow gauge railroad was completed.
The Valley Room also includes an area dedicated to changing exhibits. Currently on display is the work of Joe De Yong, a deaf western artist who studied under Charles Russell, then moved to Santa Barbara in 1926. While riding with the Rancheros Visitadores, he met Cecil B. DeMille, who hired him as an advisor on many Hollywood films. Future exhibits will include a military display, and traveling exhibits from other museums like the Smithsonian.
The security and climate control upgrades which were part of the remodeling of the Valley Room make such exhibits possible, and also protect the museum's valuable collections. In time, all our smaller exhibits will be behind glass, Crockett says, ruing that some artifacts in the past have disappeared , and how some of the older folks just can't resist handling items they remember from their childhoods.
A diamond in the rough is the museum's library, an overflowing treasure trove of hundreds of rare books, periodicals, manuscripts, photographs, legal documents, and scrapbooks about the Old West, early California and the Valley. Museum bookkeeper and volunteer Joy Chamberlain says: There's really a limited amount of information written about the Santa Ynez Valley, but most of what does exist is here. The museum also has a sizable collection of taped oral histories from people who have stopped in to tell stories from their pasts.
Chamberlain became involved with the museum after her husband George was named Honored Vaquero of the year in 1997, only a month before he died. George loved the carriages, says Chamberlain, and he was well known in the Valley for his mule teams. This was a real honor for him, she says, and because of that, I have a very special place in my heart for the museum.
The annual tradition of honoring a local vaquero (or vaquera) is one of the highlights of the museum's popular Vaquero Show. It features three days of live music and food, celebration, and western artisans displaying their wares. This year, Shiela Varian gave a vaquero demonstration on horseback using a hackamore and spade bit. To see the old equipment is one thing, but to see it being used really brings it to life, says Crockett. She's really into teaching people the old ways.
A complete list of Valley residents who have contributed their time, talents and possessions to the museum over the years would probably stretch as long as a barbed wire fence. Of those who were instrumental to the creation of the museum, however, one who played a key role was Jeannette Lyons. Much of what was contributed to the museum in the beginning came directly from her, says Chamberlain, and the items she donated were very representative of our local history. She was also the museum's first historian, and according to Chamberlain, Her records were all handwritten yet incredibly precise.
Born in Ballard in 1886, Lyons had experienced that history firsthand. She grew up in an early pioneer family who had been smitten with California Fever and traveled here by train from Pennsylvania. A dedicated educator who was a longtime teacher in the town's one-room schoolhouse, her passion for teaching inspired her efforts to create this legacy of local history.
Through the years, the museum has been in the capable hands of many people who cared tremendously, says Chamberlain. Yet the work never ends. She hopes the museum's artifacts and literature will all be professionally cataloged one day. We have a huge backlog of items to be dated, described and recorded, she says. The technology exists in the form of a museum computer program called Past Perfect, but the research and data input will require help from volunteers.
Yet for those involved today, volunteering for the museum is obviously a labor of love. The people that originally started the museum knew we had wonderful, wonderful history, and their intent was to make sure it wasn't forgotten, Chamberlain says. Her smile says that is not likely to happen. The museum remains in good hands.
The Santa Ynez Valley Historical Society
Museum and Carriage House
3596 Sagunto Street, Santa Ynez
Phone: 688-7889
Hours of Operation: Wednesday - Sunday, 12:00 - 4:00
Exhibits:
Native American Room: Rare Chumash baskets,mortars & pestles, and artifacts from many other North American tribes.
West Room: Essentials of early ranch life: saddles, bits, reatas, branding irons, guns, a barbed wire collection, and other ranch gear. Artifacts from Old Mission Santa Ines and early Spanish settlers.
Pioneer Room: A completely furnished kitchen, bedroom and parlor representing a late 19th century Valley home.
Jeannette Lyons Room: Changing displays of period clothing, china and crystal.
The Valley Room: The new Valley Towns exhibit and changing exhibits.
Courtyard: The 1883 Santa Ynez Jail House, a chuck wagon, an original bell from El Camino Real, John Cody's first sculpture, and more.
Blacksmith Shop: Items from blacksmiths that once operated in the Valley.
Farm Annex: Old farm machinery.
Parks-Janeway Carriage House: Over 35 horse-drawn vehicles including stages, surreys, phaetons, carts, broughams, buckboard wagons, and a hearse. Silver-mounted saddles, harnesses and more. |
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Newest addition to the museum is the "Valley Room" a project three years in the making. Constructed to represent each of the Valley's five towns, arranged in order of their founding&emdash;Ballard first, Buellton last. Below, volunteers are the lifeblood of the museum. 88-year-old Millie Steel has enjoyed her one day per month stint greeting the public on Saturday afternoons. She retired from the museum in December and the position is currently open. BELOW, the 7,000 sq. ft. carriage house holds an incredible collection of carriages that includes several rare stage coaches.
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All Rights Reserved. Copyright ©2002 by Inside the Santa Ynez Valley Magazine.
Contents are the property of Inside the Santa Ynez Valley Magazine and may not be reproduced in any manner or form without prior written permission from the publisher.
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