Thread: newspaper feature

ALready published. Open to any criticism.



Curt Cragg says he never set out to become the Valley’s archivist.

“I enjoyed history as a subject in high school and college, but I’m not one of those people who have read every book on Abraham Lincoln,” he says with a laugh.

But when it comes to the Valley, Cragg is a cornucopia of information.

Cragg, 48, of Solvang sits on the board of directors for the Buellton Historical Society; volunteers at the Santa Ynez Valley Historical Society; and wrote the first books highlighting the histories of Buellton and Solvang.

The Orange County native grins when asked how he became gatekeeper of the Valley’s historical record.
“I can’t explain to you why … It doesn’t make any sense … why I do it,” says Cragg. “I started searching for early service-station pictures — and here I am.”


Cragg moved to the Valley 12 years ago, working as a general contractor.
His interest in the Valley’s history began when he started mining for picture
s, in 2003, to complement his collection of old service-station relics, such as gas pumps, oil cans and signs.
Cragg used these items, which harkened back to Buellton’s “Service Town, U.S.A.” heyday, when he built a mock Texaco service station as part of an extension to a game room on his farm.

“I was fascinated with the old gas stations,” he says. “When I saw photographs of actual gas stations, I was hooked.”

Before long, Cragg had compiled more photographs of Buellton than even the Buellton Historical Society, and then he became interested in the service stations that once lined Mission Drive in Solvang.

Cragg says every photograph he collected was a part of a story, compelling him to meet the people who were connected with the places.

“I was surprised by how many long-term owners or relatives were still living in town,” he says. “And they were willing to share their stories with me.” That’s not to say some people weren’t reluctant.


“Sometimes I find people who don’t believe their past is important to others,” he says. “That’s the challenge.”
Cragg’s interest in service-station photos developed into an avocation for collecting old ephemera —brochures, maps, postcards.

“I’d glom onto anything I could get a hold of that would help me piece together the local history,” he says.
If he couldn’t get them in the Valley, Cragg found them from other collectors, on eBay, at antique stores, real estate sales and even garage sales.

Cragg recalls attending an estate sale in Solvang where be bought a film of the 1961 Danish Days parade. It didn’t seem like a significant finding, until he realized that it was of the 50th anniversary of Solvang.

Eventually, Cragg’s attention moved beyond service stations to the motels and diners that often accompanied them. His collection of photos from different periods helped him create a mosaic of a particular town’s development.
“It’s like a puzzle,” he says. “You don’t see where the pieces fit until they’re in front of you.”

Cragg would later use his findings as material when he authored two photo-laden books, “Images of America: Buellton” and “Post History Series: Solvang.”


His book on Buellton traces the area’s history from its beginnings on Buell Ranch, to its establishment as a town, to its current redevelopment as a bedroom community.

“I think Cragg has done a remarkable job with the book,” says Jim Buell, grandson of Rufus Thompson Buell, who was one of the first pioneers to buy property in the Santa Ynez Valley, part of which became his namesake.
Many of the photographs and information used for Cragg’s book were lent by Buell.

“It’s fortunate that in the community we have someone who has taken such an active interest in not just Buellton, but the entire Valley,” Buell says. ““If someone doesn’t take the time to organize it now and chronicle it, every year that passes, you get a little further away from any living sources.”

Buellton is the only community in the Valley Cragg hasn’t lived in, but he appears to be the most obsessed with the area.

“It is travel nostalgia,” he explains. “It’s that whole idea of the early automobile, that road trip up the coast of California.”

As a youth, Cragg’s parents would travel the highway from Southern California to Oregon, stopping to eat at the famous Pea Soup Andersen’s — a restaurant he devotes an entire chapter to in his book.


“That was probably my early fascination, but I must admit, I hated pea soup as a kid,” he admits.
Cragg’s says the history of the Valley, with the exception of Solvang, is a story about transportation.

“From a historical perspective, the towns started with travel by rivers, then by stagecoaches, then trains and automobiles,” Cragg says. “If you look at transportation, you can see how towns grew.”

Ballard, one of the Valley’s earliest towns, was a stage coach stop after the Gold Rush; Los Olivos and Santa Ynez were developed with the expansion of the Pacific Coast Railway,” Cragg says.

“Los Olivos was built because of the Pacific Coast Railway Company, and they brought people here to try to sell them the lots, but they arrived when it was raining,” Cragg says. “So nobody bought much property. The same thing happened a few months later, so most of Los Olivos was unsold. It was a ghost town.

“It was like that for years. There weren’t a lot of the tasting rooms there are now. So it’s taken these last 12 years (to where) Los Olivos has exploded the way we’ve seen it today. Perhaps that’s going to be the story of the town for the next 50 years.”

Santa Ynez was also built on speculation of the railway coming. But it never came; instead, the railroad line went around the coast instead of through the Valley.


“A lot of people were building hotels and creating lots to sell in time for the arrival of the train,” Cragg says.
The absence of a railroad slowed the pace of development, and over time the Santa Ynez community embraced the western, small-town ambience.

“If the railroad had come through, Santa Ynez could have looked a lot like Santa Barbara as we know it today.”
In his book on Buellton, Cragg notes how the state Highway Department sent surveyors along the California coastline, looking to straighten the then-old, winding Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco, to make travel easier. The route’s path ultimately ran through the Buell Ranch.

“The highway created a service station town, initially,” Cragg points out. “And now it’s evolved into a bedroom community.”

When asked what community has changed most dramatically, Cragg offers Solvang as an example.
Solvang didn’t begin as the bustling Danish hub of tourism as we know it today, he says.
“Solvang shifted from being a Danish farming colony to a tourist-oriented town after World War II,” Cragg says. “It began getting publicity, in part, because of a 1947 Saturday Evening Post article called ‘Little Denmark,’ so some locals got the notion that they should capitalize off the appeal, and soon many of the Danish-style buildings were built.”


Copenhagen Drive, where today people find trinkets, T-shirts, postcards and taste wine, used to be Main Street, a central point of commerce in the Danish colony. Nowadays, the only thing the old and new corridor has in common is the dirt underneath it all.

Cragg shares his contribution of history to historians, journalists, government committees and people doing family genealogies.

“I had a man come all the way from England to find out about the building his grandfather ran a business from,” he says. “He wanted to know what it was about this place that brought him here.”

Cragg, in the storage room at the Santa Ynez Valley Historical Museum, is culling from a recent collection about Los Alamos.

“I’ve gathered these things,” he says, holding a little brochure. “I need to research them and find out more.”
Cragg then quips: “Hiding in a dark room — that’s not what this is about. It’s just the hazard of the job.”
He enters the museum’s newest exhibit, Dairy Days in the Santa Ynez Valley, which highlights the area’s dairy history. Cragg helped design many of the displays.

He says his experience as a convention planner — focusing on audio and visual production –– shapes the way he approaches archival work.


Cragg currently works with Valley museums to nudge them into the digital age by helping them get computers and scanners to copy images and recordings. A scan of an original photograph, he says, is as good as the original, enabling archivists to copy important photographs and return the originals.

“Curt took on the project of digitizing and organizing much of the photo collection so that old, fragile photos could be viewed online, eliminating the risk of damage by too much handling,” says Chris Bashforth, director of the Santa Ynez Valley Historical Museum. “He has been instrumental in developing and designing the museum’s historical exhibits for the past two years.”

Replies Cragg: “Ultimately, my goal is to make things more accessible for the public. The more people can access their local history and learn about it, the better job we’re doing as a historical society

There are two ways that American history societies amuse me, they seem to think that history started when the last invaders arrived, and that that was so recently.
The last lot of invaders built churches round here a thousand years ago, I take my daughter to school along a road that is so straight because the Romans built it that way two thousand years ago (Nearly) and there are figures cut in the chalk on the South Downs near here that are a thousand years older than that.
Having said that I have a friend who is an American archaeologist, he did his training excavating Amero-Indian sites, so I guess this is partly prejudice on my part.

Sorry, I didn't comment on the article, but then you know it's reasonably written if it has been accepted. It's not entirely to my taste, I prefer things with more information and less chattily presented, but I am not an editor or much of a newspaper reader.

Originally Posted by Olly Buckle

There are two ways that American history societies amuse me, they seem to think that history started when the last invaders arrived, and that that was so recently.
The last lot of invaders built churches round here a thousand years ago, I take my daughter to school along a road that is so straight because the Romans built it that way two thousand years ago (Nearly) and there are figures cut in the chalk on the South Downs near here that are a thousand years older than that.
Having said that I have a friend who is an American archaeologist, he did his training excavating Amero-Indian sites, so I guess this is partly prejudice on my part.

Sorry, I didn't comment on the article, but then you know it's reasonably written if it has been accepted. It's not entirely to my taste, I prefer things with more information and less chattily presented, but I am not an editor or much of a newspaper reader.

Well there's the history of the land and the history of the towns, the latter was the focus of the story.

What do you mean by "chattily presented"?

What do you mean by "chattily presented"?

Good question, maybe it was a bit of a throwaway remark. What I think I meant was that it contains the same sort of things that "chat" does, that is a mixture of known facts, undemanding generalised information and the occasional interesting "bite". I would think that is exactly the right sort of mix for a newspaper, confirming the reader in some of his opinions, giving him a bit more, but not stretching him too far to make it tedious or uncomfortable and stop him reading. A good skill.