One Hundred Years of Fiesta

One Hundred Years of Fiesta

Unraveling the Origins of
Santa Barbara’s Iconic Celebration

By Camie Barnwell | July 31, 2024
Photos Courtesy of S.B. Historical Museum

Read the rest of our 2024 Fiesta cover story here.

As Fiesta celebrates its 100th birthday, it’s made me think about all the ways I’ve been connected to this event … a young reporter hunting for colorful stories, an impromptu emcee at the courthouse, a backstage flamenco dance mom steering a dress-filled cart down State Street, a carefree partygoer dancing my heart out under the full moon, and now, a more seasoned Santa Barbaran writing this story as my, well, Fiesta swan song.

Through the years, I’ve been curious to know more about how — and why — this event came to be. What were the mindsets, motivations, and sensibilities in 1924 Santa Barbara? What did Fiesta mean to its residents back then? How did the planners pull it off? 

So, for the 100th, I dove into the deep end of the archives to see what I could learn.

In the last five months, I’ve read every book I could find about Fiesta and the history of Santa Barbara. I cozied up to librarians and historians. I reviewed meeting minutes, historical timelines, city proclamations, and personal letters. I pored over news articles from L.A. to San Francisco and everywhere in between. I put it out there to the universe: talked about Fiesta with a guy at Trader Joe’s, the waitress at Jill’s, the bartender at the Chase, my Uber driver, and other local writers and editors. I spoke to Fiesta lovers and haters, insiders and outsiders, long-timers and newcomers, young people, old people, and casual types for whom Fiesta means little more than grabbing a taco at the mercado.

A couple of things struck me: History is in the eye of the beholder, and so is Fiesta, and this “party” is — and always has been — more than just a party.

One Saturday in June, researching in the underground floors of the downtown Los Angeles Central Library, I was tickled when an attentive librarian had placed before me a newspaper clipping from a 1979 edition of the Los Angeles Times. A reporter named John Hurst had been assigned to travel to Santa Barbara to cover Fiesta that year. His story captured the paradox beautifully: 

Fiesta is:

—A celebration of local residents.

—A highly successful tourist attraction.

—A boon for local businesses.

—A hardship for local businesses.

—A celebration of divergent cultures.

—An ethnic insult.

In fact, Fiesta is probably all of those things.

I was sad to learn that John Hurst passed away in 2019. I would have loved to talk to him, and to so many other writers and historians who captured the various essences of Fiesta over the past century. 

I’m ready to take one last swing at it myself.

A Spanish Metaphor

Now join me in a journey back to the Santa Barbara of a century ago, where a construction boom was reshaping the city, when the Ku Klux Klan had marred Cabrillo Boulevard with their hateful stamp just days before Fiesta’s opening, where the Roaring Twenties flourished under the shadow of Prohibition, and when a team of locals with a near-nothing budget were determined to throw a party that would outshine New Orleans’s Mardi Gras and Pasadena’s Rose Parade.

In 1924, Santa Barbara was a town of about 20,000 people who were witnessing grand buildings going up all around town. The streets were busy. The Granada, the Lobero, City Hall, the News-Press building, the El Paseo Restaurant and its Spanish courtyard, Santa Barbara High, the original Roosevelt Elementary, the Balboa Building, the 200-room Carrillo Hotel, and the University Club were all erected between 1922 and 1924. There was also a push to build modest but well-designed homes across town (including the small but sturdy 1924 Craftsman bungalow of this author).

With this rapid development came a growing sentiment that Santa Barbara should slow down, not get too big or change too fast, as had so many California boomtowns. Articles from the time indicate that city leaders wanted Santa Barbara to grow without sacrificing the essence of its “romantic past.” But just what “romantic past” were they looking to revive?

The producers of the 1924 Fiesta were drawing their inspiration from a depiction of life in Santa Barbara during the early to mid-1800s — the rancho period a century before their time — when a small pueblo of Spanish, Mexican, and Chumash people cohabited as “Californios” amid adobe casas, cattle ranches, skilled horsemen, guitar-strumming caballeros, dainty señoritas, frequent fiestas y siestas, and “¡Mi casa es su casa!” hospitality.

In my research, I stumbled upon scholars who describe this yearning for Santa Barbara’s Spanish past as the Spanish Metaphor — a fascination with the allure, romance, and charm of early California that glosses over its complexities and conflicts.

I found it interesting to learn how far from idyllic the rancho period actually was. It was a time of great transition, chaos, and danger — life expectancy was around 30 to 40 years. People got around on foot, on horseback, or by creaky ox cart. A menacing pirate named Bouchard and other threats lurked off the coast. Grizzly bears roamed the hills. Power and allegiances were in upheaval: The Spanish flag rose in 1782 and fell in 1822; the Mexican flag rose in 1822 and fell in 1846 with the establishment of the Bear Flag Republic; by 1848, California was officially ceded to the United States, and up went the Stars and Stripes. 

Forced into slavery and servitude on ranches, the Chumash revolted against the Spanish and Mexican priests and soldiers here in 1824. An indigenous culture that had existed in this region for 13,000 years — with a population of 22,000 before Spanish contact — had plummeted to 3,000 by 1831 due to disease and abuse. Santa Barbara still bears the scar of these injustices.

Anniversaries and birthdays are a time for reflection, and when you look back at 100 years of Fiesta, even the most fervent fans like me may grimace at its historical roots and struggle with the legacy that Fiesta and the Spanish Metaphor have woven into Santa Barbara’s cultural, political, and social fabric, not to mention our aesthetic. I’ve met Spaniards who say that Santa Barbara looks more Spanish than Spain.

Another View

But there are other ways of looking at it, too. Fiesta symbolizes our city’s collective spirit, a tradition connecting our past to our present.

And, you could argue, the success of that first Fiesta in 1924 helped Santa Barbara become the city we are today.

When the Fiesta planners — a group of white, mostly well-to-do men — chose to pay tribute to the “Old Spanish Days,” it doesn’t seem likely that they were trying to make a political statement celebrating the oppressive Spanish and Mexican regimes.

No, instead it looks as though they were just trying to put together a great party, coming up with a theme that dovetailed on a popular trend of the ’20s — the revival of Spanish Colonial architecture and aesthetic. They had two months to pull it all together so as to be ready for the reopening of the newly rebuilt Lobero Theatre.

And although I’ve probably described it this way myself in the past, I now believe it’s also an oversimplification to see the first Fiesta purely as a marketing tactic by businessmen who wanted to draw tourists to Santa Barbara. A review of the stories, articles, and letters leading up to Fiesta suggests far more elevated aspirations. 

Return to Paradise

By many accounts, these Dons — as the planning committee named themselves — were so proud of their town, so unique in its natural beauty and history, that they were confident everyone on the planet would want to visit if they just knew about this Fiesta.

An introduction written for one of the first Fiesta programs took it this far:

“With the sweeping gesture of the hospitable Dons of old, welcoming guests on their verandah-ed casas, Santa Barbara invites the WORLD TO DANCE WITH HER, SING WITH HER, PLAY WITH HER — even to reflect a fleet moment upon the beauty of her, as she serenely sits enthroned twixt amethyst mountains and turquoise sea; […] And so it is that Santa Barbara throws up her doors to all California and to those beyond who know not yet the PLAY-SPIRIT of the Land of Enchantment.” (Noticias, Vol. XII, No. 3, Pg. 9)

The prose may be a bit ornate, but the sentiment stands.

It’s important to note that, in the few years preceding the first Fiesta, preservation and beautification efforts around Spanish Colonial Revival architecture were taking center stage in Santa Barbara. Civic leaders like Bernhard and Irene Hoffmann and powerhouse Pearl Chase were at the helm. The wealthy Hoffmanns had purchased and restored the Casa de la Guerra adobe, also adding the stunner of the El Paseo Restaurant, its beautiful courtyard, and Street of Spain. Other affluent locals followed suit and started purchasing and restoring the old adobes that had begun to crumble around downtown.

In the Morning Press of February 1922, an article spoke of the push for a city bond to support the creation of a “City of Spain” around the neglected De la Guerra Plaza as well as a new, Spanish-style City Hall. On the Editorial page, however, the publisher noted “Children Should Come First” and that a new high school was a far greater community need. 

Both projects would come true by 1924, and both were in the Spanish Colonial Revival style.

One sad outcome of this commitment to turn Santa Barbara into a Spanish-themed paradise meant dismantling the once-busy Chinatown along Canon Perdido Street, near the Presidio, and displacing many of its residents.

The Time Is Right

Throughout Santa Barbara’s early history, there had been many iterations of historical tributes: fiestas, parades, and festivals. None of them had stuck as an annual tradition.

But timing is everything, and the timing was right, and the Fiesta Dons may have known that.

By 1924, the shadow of World War I had finally begun to fade, as had the memory of a devastating flu pandemic that had killed 50 million and infected 500 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1920. 

Surfacing was a marked sense of hope, excitement, and desire to leave worries behind, here and across the country. The “Roaring ’20s” were in full swing. Santa Barbara boasted several movie houses and theaters, including the California Theatre, opened in 1920, and the Lobero and Granada, both opened in 1924. Although radios were scarce in households, record players were becoming popular. So were jazz and speakeasies.

Getting to and from Santa Barbara had gotten easier. The railroad first arrived in Santa Barbara in 1887, and by 1901, it was possible for travelers to journey by train to both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Henry Ford’s Model T had begun to dominate, and the city was paving its roads as quickly as possible.

Of course, the era was not immune to some of the ugly racism that the rest of the country was experiencing. Most dramatic was an event just days before Fiesta’s official opening, reported in the Morning Press on August 9, 1924: The Ku Klux Klan had painted a “greeting” across the busy Cabrillo Boulevard at State Street and in front of the Old Mission.

I was reminded during my research of the incongruous fact that the first Fiesta came during the “dry” Prohibition era, when alcohol — including wine and beer — was outlawed across the country. Santa Barbara historian and Fiesta buff Erin Graffy described how Santa Barbara had its share of “speakeasies,” including at the Casa de Sevilla on Chapala Street, in the basement of the Balboa Building, and at the Covarrubias Adobe, located on the grounds of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum. Graffy said the secluded coves along Santa Barbara’s coastline made it a particularly popular destination for bootleggers and rum runners to unload their illegal booze. Local fishermen got in on the action by transporting the shipments hidden in bottles or boxes under tons of their smelly fish.

It’s hard to imagine Fiesta without ordering a Fiesta margarita. Maybe they didn’t have to … “Bartender, I’ll take a bathtub gin on the rocks …with salt.”

Gather the Troops

Short on funds and worried about attendance, Fiesta’s publicity committee came through with clever marketing: selling tickets to buy votes to select the Queen of Fiesta; fining people for not wearing a costume; and sending bevies of Spanish-garbed, flower-toting beauties down to the train depot to lure passengers to the party.

I laughed out loud at a Fiesta story headline that ran in one of the dailies: “Fines Await Men Lacking Mustachios!” which, according to the article, sent men into a whisker-growing frenzy. Organizers even came up with an annual Fiesta “theme song” and serenaded it up and down State Street.

Adding an extra spark, on June 16, Santa Barbara Mayor Charles M. Andera issued a citywide proclamation that ran on the front page of the Santa Barbara Daily News, calling for the “cooperation of all citizens in order that the festival may be worthy of the old traditions, color, beauty and distinction of the city.” The mayor encouraged the entire town to dress in costume, partake in the events, and open their homes to each other and out-of-town visitors to share in the “carnival spirit of the ‘Old Spanish Days.’ ”

Many members of the planning committee donated their own funds to underwrite the event. Dwight Murphy, an East Coast transplant and millionaire breeder of palomino horses, is said to have quietly poured thousands of his own dollars into making the parade happen. He was named El Presidente of the Old Spanish Days organization the following year.

Described in one account as a “living page from the glorious history of bygone days,” the parade featured an array of participants representing the diverse cultures of Santa Barbara, including Chumash, Spanish, Mexican, and Californio.

That first Fiesta — which occurred August 13 to 16 and under a full moon — delivered all of the expected opportunities for “gaiety and merrymaking” promised in advertisements: pageants, the historical parade, street dances, serenades, an open-air marketplace, a rodeo, a carnival, a masked costume ball at the Arlington Hotel, open houses, community barbecues, an air show that included stunts and even bombs dropped offshore, a reenactment of the landing of the explorer Juan Cabrillo, and a beautiful array of performances and dances — but minus the flamenco, which did not come to Fiesta until decades later. 

Accounts vary, but it is believed that more than half the town attended the festivities. 

After the event had wrapped up, the author of a front-page article in the Sunday, August 17, 1924 Morning Press declared: “Old Spanish Days has won itself a distinctive and permanent place in the life of Santa Barbara. The first annual community Fiesta passed into history at midnight last night, but left a definite assurance that it will be followed by a bigger and better Old Spanish Days next year…. Men, women, and children seemed for the first time really to forget their repressions and mingle in a frolicking democracy of merriment.”

I’m not sure what “frolicking democracy of merriment” is, but I’m willing to give it a try if you are.

Of course, many things have changed in a century.

Fiesta cost about $5,000 to put on in 1924. Today the figure is about $920,000. The Old Spanish Days board is now packed with women, and people of diverse backgrounds. You can buy a margarita without going to the slammer.

Other things have stayed the same.

A 1924 train schedule showed that it took 10 hours to get from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. It still does. 

Almost And Forever

Native Santa Barbaran Paul Lopez is 99 years young. He was not at that first Fiesta, but he was at all the others thereafter, except during World War II, the only time in Fiesta’s 100-year history that the event was canceled. (Even after the devastating Santa Barbara earthquake of 1925, Fiesta still took place in a scaled-back format as locals charged ahead with rebuilding Santa Barbara as a Spanish-themed haven) 

“When I was a boy, they used to recruit kids to be in the parade dressed up as Indians. They would give us $5 to walk down State Street. Then we would all go up to the Old Mission. It was really beautiful, and they would sing their old songs. There were lots of open house barbecues,” he recounted. 

Lopez later married one of the Cota sisters, Gladys, whose father, dancer Juan Cota, performed at the first Fiesta and was a direct descendent of a Presidio soldier (See the In Memoriam to Juan Cota’s youngest daughter, Kathy Cota, on page 31.) “The whole town all looked forward to it, and that full moon was always there. For our whole family, Fiesta has always been just a happy time.” 

Read the rest of our 2024 Fiesta cover story here.