It’s time once again for another Barney’s Kulture Kwiz. If you correctly answer all 25 questions you get a big star on your class paper. (Answers at right. Please, no peeking.) But watch it. I’ve thrown in some trick questions. Ready?
1. In what year did San Luis Obispo County split off from Santa Barbara County, and why?
2. Why did historian Walker A. Tompkins resign from the Santa Barbara City Council?
3. What famous newspaper publisher was the key advocate for building Cachuma reservoir?
4. What was the original name of Santa Maria?
5. Who was the last male mayor of Santa Barbara?
6. Quick now: If you stood at the end of Stearns Wharf, would you be looking due west, allowing people to gather to see the sunset?
7. The Rincon is the link between what counties? And what does Rincon mean?
8. Who was Pearl Chase’s husband and what was his profession?
9. Who murdered Jose Lobero?
10. Is the Santa Barbara Airport within city limits?
11. Before it became a UC campus, the UCSB site was: (a) The Goleta Cemetery; (b) A pirate’s harbor in the early 1800s; (c) World War II Marine air base; (d) the location of Goleta’s first avocado orchard; (e) a dump.
12. In what year did the Carpinteria City Hall burn down and who torched it?
13. What was Elings Park on Las Positas Road before it was a park?
14. True or false: School children donated money to rebuild the Santa Barbara Mission after it was completely destroyed in the 1925 earthquake.
15. True or false: The city has okayed plans to rebuild St. Francis Hospital on the same site.
16. True or false: Cottage Hospital originally began as actual cottages.
17. True or false: Part of Santa Barbara’s desal plant has been sold to Saudi Arabia.
18. True or false: Solvang is not a city because residents have rejected the proposal twice.
19. True or false: When Carpinteria became a city in 1874, it outlawed the sale of liquor.
20. True or false: Spanish was the official language of the County Board of Supervisors’ records until 1898.
21. True or false: The Treaty of Guadalupe was signed by Mexico and the U.S. granting the U.S. California, Arizona, and other territories, including Baja California. However, Congress refused to accept Baja because of its arid climate, difficult terrain, and isolation.
22. True or false: John Fremont, who led U.S. forces in taking California from Mexico and captured Santa Barbara, was
a Republican presidential candidate.
23. True or false: State Street takes the route of an original Chumash path down to the beach.
24. True or false: Santa Barbara Cemetery lies outside city limits.
25. True or false: The Santa Barbara Mission lies outside city limits.
Answers
1. San Luis County never split from Santa Barbara County, but Ventura County did.
2. Walker (“Two Gun”) Tompkins was a good man but was never elected to the City Council and to my knowledge never sought public office.
3. T.M. Storke, former owner and publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press.
4. Central City.
5. Hal Conklin. But the former city councilman only served a few months before being disqualified by a court interpretation of the city’s own term limits ordinance.
6. More southerly, actually.
7. Santa Barbara and Ventura. Rincon is Spanish for “corner.”
8. Pearl never married.
9. Alas, poor Jose committed suicide. He founded an opera house, which was rebuilt in the 1920s as the Lobero Theatre.
10. Yes. Although located in Goleta, the airport was annexed via a route through the Santa Barbara Channel. (State law doesn’t permit that sort of thing anymore.)
11. (c) A Marine air base, using the airport.
12. It never burned.
13. The City of Santa Barbara dump.
14. False. The 1925 quake did not destroy the Mission.
15. Sorry, but the city has not voted to require that building be rebuilt as a hospital. The city has okayed rebuilding of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, however.
16. True.
17. Amazing but true. However, the main part of the plant remains in storage. But it would take quite a long leadtime to get it into action. Somewhere on a shelf I still have a bottle of desal water produced during the plant’s short trial run.
18. Solvang is a city and to my knowledge voters never turned down the idea.
19. Carpinteria was incorporated in 1965 without any ban on booze. Lompoc, however, was originally formed as a temperance community. That didn’t last.
20. False. English was the language of record long before that.
21. False. Baja was never included in the Treaty of Guadalupe.
22. True, Fremont yearned to be president as a GOP candidate, but never made it.
23. True.
24. True.
25. False.