Tag archives: history

This chunky Botta’s Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae) at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History lived his life at the Santa Barbara Airport, where he was collected October 29, 1963. A robust male, he’s one of the largest specimens preserved in the drawer in the background. Before preparing this taxidermy, scientists measured him as over 11 […]

Since the days of Spanish settlement in California in the late 1700s, a universal desire for unique, beautiful clothing and adornment was perceivable. Recently, a new museum has arisen in town that celebrates that artistic desire. Couture Pattern Museum, founded by Cara Austine-Rademaker and staffed by a group of fashion industry experts, has taken on […]

I’ve been invited to rock ‘n’ roll’s inner sanctum by its madcap custodians; they who will usher me into the catacombs from whose torchlit stores they assemble their annual tent revival at the Lobero theatre. They’ve put together a particularly wig-flipping rock show for José Lobero’s venerable 150-year-old opera house, the curtain rising on their […]

I have yet to encounter any Progressive or socialist with a well-rounded knowledge of history, economics, and philosophy. They don’t seem to be open to ideas other than socialism as Marx-Lenin-Marcuse-Piketty espouse it. They have little understanding of the ideas of Aristotle-Spinoza-Locke-Adam Smith. As a result, their circular reasoning gets things wrong and, when reduced […]

This month’s “Way It Was” takes us back to the 3rd century AD when Diocletian Augustus was the Eastern Roman emperor and Maximianus was his co-emperor. They forced people to participate in the Imperial Cult, which considered members of the ruling family to be among the pantheon of the divine who must be obeyed and […]

As every newspaper and magazine in the Country has reminded us, this year marks the 100th Anniversary of the “Mother Road,” Route 66. Also known as “The Main Street of America,” it traversed and connected the main streets of all the small towns between Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California.  The famous T.V. show of […]

These strikingly green shells belong to the Emerald Green Snail, Papustyla pulcherrima. The species is endemic to (only found on) Manus Island off the shores of Papua New Guinea. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as near threatened. Habitat destruction is the primary threat, as the rainforest trees the species relies […]

No, this isn’t a collection of antique corn dogs – it’s a scientifically valuable record of regional biodiversity. These are Botta’s Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae) specimens in the Vertebrate Zoology Collections at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. To the consternation of many farmers and gardeners, gophers seem particularly abundant in the region right now, […]

Each segment in this elegant structure is a chamber that once sheltered an individual animal. In effect, it’s an apartment block just a millimeter wide. The image is black-and-white because it was taken with a scanning electron microscope, a device that creates images of tiny objects by bombarding them with electrons rather than sensing visible […]

Flamingos famously feed with their heads upside-down, filtering algae, brine shrimp, and other food from shallow water. A closer look at the beak here reveals filtering structures composed of keratin, the same protein that makes up hair, hooves, horns, etc. This skull of a Lesser Flamingo (Phoeniconaias minor) is among over 44,000 specimens curated by […]

Looking neat upon the seats of a bicycle built for two, a duo of Italian wheelmen rolled into Santa Barbara on May 10, 1901. Carlo Reiter and Mino Galvini had left Florence, Italy, on July 5, 1899, after members of their biking club wagered 50,000 lire that they couldn’t ride 75,000 miles by Christmas Day […]

Once upon a time, a lovely clapboard cottage graced the southwest corner of San Ysidro and East Valley roads. Built in 1914, it was the home of the Montecito Home Club, which was founded in 1908 in an old adobe building across the street. The purpose of the club was to provide a center for […]

Two roads and a lake are named for him, but few remember John Alexander Jameson or the details behind his tremendous efforts to benefit and protect his adopted hometown of Montecito.  Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1868, where his father, John Alexander Jameson Sr., served as a judge of the Superior Court, Jameson Jr. followed […]

Ludmilla Pilat Welch married her artist husband, Thaddeus Welch, in Ossining, New York, in 1883 when she was 16 and he was 39. Thad’s adventure-filled journey to become an artist had eventually led him to study in Munich and Paris for six years before returning to the United States in 1881. He settled for a […]

This is Ficus eospila, a carnivorous snail from the fig shell group with a dazzling foot like the train of a black-and-white ball gown. Howard/Berry Curator of Malacology Henry W. Chaney, Ph.D. photographed this individual on a 1993 collecting trip in Western Australia with Barry Wilson PhD then at work on the two-volume compendium, Australian […]

In the past 35 years, the eucalyptus tree has become one of the most controversial species in California. Some writers sing its praises, both for its beneficial properties and its beauty. Its image has been celebrated in California landscape painting for over one hundred years. California writer Lawrence Clark Powell wrote, “… no tree is […]

This specimen of a marlinspike shell (Terebra maculata) has sentimental and historic significance, which makes it a favorite of Associate Curator Vanessa Delnavaz, MA. The shell comes with a label handwritten by S. Stillman Berry: “This poor battered shell is kept for reasons of sentiment. It has been in our family at least 110 years… […]

A few are missing, but this skull has places for 50 teeth: the most of any terrestrial mammal in North America! These abundant and diversely shaped teeth served an adaptable, opportunistic animal: the Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana). First introduced to California in 1910, they are now seen year-round in much of our region. Their abundance […]

In life, the skull of this Duck-billed Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) contained a lot of sensing tools for finding prey underwater. The Y-shaped bones at the front supported a bill full of receptors, thousands of which could sense the electrical fields created by the movements of other animals in the water. Echidnas are the closest living […]

My story starts when I was born at Santa Barbara’s St. Francis Hospital in 1922. I spent my childhood on the Campbell Ranch which is now part of UCSB’s Education campus and was the site for Devereaux School. In fact, I sprained my ankle jumping down from a loft of the Red Barn on the […]