The Earthquake That Invented Santa Barbara
How a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in 1925 destroyed an ordinary California city and a small group of architects replaced it with a Spanish fantasy that never existed.
• Matt Dennis
The Blowout That Started the Environmental Movement
On January 28, 1969, a Union Oil well ruptured on Platform A in the Santa Barbara Channel. The 100,000 barrels that followed changed American law forever.
• Matt Dennis
The Fishing Village They Burned
In the 1890s, a thriving Chinese fishing community worked Santa Barbara's coast. The city erased them — first by law, then by fire, then by forgetting.
• Matt Dennis
The Tomol: Naval Engineering Before the Europeans Showed Up
The Chumash built plank canoes from driftwood and tar, crossed 25 miles of open ocean, and maintained a maritime trade network for 2,000 years. The engineering was not primitive.
• Matt Dennis
Rum Row: How the Channel Islands Kept Santa Barbara Drinking
During Prohibition, the Channel Islands became staging areas for a sophisticated bootlegging operation that outran the Coast Guard and supplied the entire South Coast.
• Matt Dennis