San Luis Obispo County traces its roots to these influential leaders

Who created a state university in San Luis Obispo to “teach the hand as well as the head”?

Who organized an association to protect the price of produce for farmers on the Central Coast?

Who is credited with helping to save 18 miles of spectacular coastline?

Who began seed farming in the Edna Valley and opened a store in San Luis Obispo that served as a pharmacy, bank, supply center and employment office for the Chinese community?

With school underway, it’s time to test your local history knowledge.

The Tribune asked noted historian Dan Krieger, professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly, to name 12 individuals who helped shape San Luis Obispo County’s culture, economy, education, environment, politics and growth.

Read on to learn more about these incredible entrepreneurs, visionaries, leaders and civic boosters. If you know who everyone is, give yourself an A+!

Sandra Duerr, executive editor

Tameji Eto, Japanese-American community leader in Los Osos (1883-1958)

Although he was not permitted to become a United States citizen until 1952, immigrant rancher Tameji Eto brought agricultural improvements to the Los Osos Valley, where he settled at the end of World War I.

After he established his farm in the Los Osos Valley in 1919, he had difficulty maintaining communications with his business connections in Pismo Beach. Unfortunately, the telephone company in San Luis Obispo could not justify a telephone line to serve relatively few customers. So Eto organized the Los Osos Mutual Telephone Company with a subscription of 800 shares at $100 each. Later the company was bought by the Bell system.

Eto worked to organize the Southern Central Japanese Agricultural Association to protect the price of produce for the smaller farmers in the region. He also helped create Japanese language schools — believed necessary if the U.S. deported American-born Japanese. And he was instrumental in founding the first Buddhist Temple in San Luis Obispo.

Kathleen Goddard Jones, “The Dune Mother” (1907-2001)

Kathleen Goddard Jones, referred to as the “Dune Mother,” was known for leading the fight in the 1960s against a nuclear power plant that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. proposed for the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes near Osos Flaco Lake. She is credited with helping to save 18 miles of spectacular coastline where San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties meet.

After Jones persuaded PG&E to give up the Nipomo dunes site and it became a state park in 1974, she founded the People for the Nipomo Dunes National Seashore in 1980. That group got $14 million from a 1986 state park bond to begin buying and preserving most of the 18,000 acres that have become the Nipomo-Guadalupe Dune Preserve.

Jones also was a longtime supporter of the San Luis Obispo Symphony, helped preserve what is now Montaña de Oro state park, and was founding chairperson for the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club.

Julia Morgan, Hearst Castle architect (1872-1957)

Julia Morgan is best known for her work in designing structures for Phoebe Apperson Hearst and her son, publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, which profoundly shaped her career.

Her projects ranged from Hearst Castle in San Simeon to the Monday Club in San Luis Obispo and the Minerva Club in Santa Maria. She even designed a small playhouse for the children of Steve Zegar, the San Luis Obispo taxi driver who drove her from the Southern Pacific depot to Hearst’s Ranch.

She began her studies before a professional degree was available, studying engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and taking architectural exams at L’ École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Returning to California, she was the first woman licensed to practice architecture in the state in 1904.

Morgan designed more than 700 structures including 28 Young Women’s Christian Association buildings in 15 cities. Her Arts and Crafts-style structures at Asilomar at Pacific Grove demonstrate her ability to relate buildings to a unique site integrating sunlight, fog, sand, sea and cypress.

Myron Angel, the father of Cal Poly (1827-1911)

“The father of Cal Poly” resigned from West Point in 1848 because of poor grades in math and French. He followed an uncle to California in the Gold Rush.

Angel ultimately found employment as a journalist, moving to San Luis Obispo in 1883.

Angel quickly became the region’s best known booster. He urged civic leaders to help bring the Southern Pacific Railroad to San Luis Obispo County in 1894.With it came the rough edges of a “railroad town.”

Angel envisioned a state university that would temper that roughness and “teach the hand as well as the head, so that no young man or young woman will be sent off in the world to earn their living as poorly equipped for the task as I when I landed in San Francisco in 1849.” In 1901, then Gov. Henry Gage signed legislation to establish the Cal Poly Polytechnic School; the first classes met in 1903.

Edward Gardner Lewis, founder of Atascadero (1869-1950)

E. G. Lewis is best known as the father of the Colony of Atascadero. But before his arrival here in 1913, he was nationally recognized as the patriarch of University City, Missouri, which was established shortly before the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

His Lewis Publishing Co. boasted some of the most advanced printing equipment in America and published women’s magazines targeting both rural farm wives and suburban mothers.

Lewis’ purchase of the Henry Ranch, and his subsequent move to Atascadero, may have been motivated by rising financial problems in St. Louis. In Atascadero, he invited new residents to live in a tent city while their homes were being built. The public buildings, parkways and commercial structures he planned would have made Atascadero one of the most beautiful cities in the American West.

Unfortunately, personal bankruptcy and a term in federal prison kept Lewis from fulfilling all of his dreams.

Wong On, aka Ah Louis, a builder of the American West (1840-1936)

Ah Louis was born near Canton, China, and came to the United States in the 1860s. He followed Capt. John Harford of the Pacific Coast Steamship Co. to San Luis Obispo in 1870.

Louis organized labor crews for Harford, who was building a wharf at what is now Port San Luis and a railway from there to Avila Beach. Louis expanded that railway into the Pacific Coast Railroad, which eventually went as far south as the Santa Ynez Valley.

With the boom in cinnabar mining on the North Coast, Louis also kept busy with mining and road projects. In 1877, he built the West Cuesta Canyon stage road. He also built the county road from Paso Robles to Cambria.

In 1882, Louis was awarded a contract for $1,100 for draining the Laguna neighborhood of San Luis Obispo. He started his own brickyard and began seed farming in the Edna Valley.

Three years later, Louis opened a brick store at Palm and Chorro streets, which served as a pharmacy, bank, supply center and employment office for the Chinese community. His youngest son, Howard (Toby), operated the store through the 1990s.

Julian McPhee, the man who saved Cal Poly (1896-1967)

Julian McPhee studied agriculture at UC Berkeley, developing his “learn by doing” methods for teaching increasingly mechanized farming.

In 1926, he was appointed chief of the state Bureau of Agricultural Education. He began using the Cal Poly campus for his summer institutes, training the state’s vocational agriculture teachers. By 1931, the state wanted to close the campus. McPhee offered to administer both the state bureau and the campus for a single salary; he was appointed director at Cal Poly in 1933.

McPhee secured better financing for Cal Poly from a share of the pari-mutuel betting tax at the state’s race tracks. By 1941, he had expanded the two-year technical school to a four-year college and formed a second Cal Poly campus in Pomona. Both the San Luis Obispo and Pomona locations served as military training locations during World War II.

In 1956, he presided over the readmission of women. Their admission had been cut off before his arrival in 1931.

Walter Murray, founder of The Tribune (1826-1875)

London-born law student Walter Murray emigrated to America at age 17 and worked as a printer. In 1846, he fought in the Mexican American War, arriving in California in 1847.

In 1853, Murray joined his friend Romualdo Pacheco in San Luis Obispo, where the miners’ need for beef had created a great deal of wealth. The profits from the cattle drives were attractive targets for gangs.

Murray established a law practice and defended some people accused of banditry. Viewed as an advocate of law and order, his home was shot up by bandidos. He helped form the San Luis Obispo Committee of Vigilance in 1858.

Murray played a major role in keeping San Luis Obispo County in the Union throughout the Civil War. He launched The Tribune in 1869.

The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, began women’s education here in 1876

In 1876, at the request of Thaddeus Amat, the Spanish-born bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles, the newly founded Spanish Immaculate Heart of Mary sent eight sisters to San Luis Obispo.

Until then, there wasn’t a school for women south of San Jose. Both classrooms and a convent were built. Within two weeks of the sisters’ arrival, classes were held. According to oral traditions, most of the nuns mastered English grammar within a year or two.

The convent was originally built to house just the sisters, but it accommodated special boarders such as Elsie Price when necessary.

Price was the granddaughter of English immigrant John Michael Price, one of the founding supervisors of San Luis Obispo County. When her mother died, her father was forced to seek work out of town. Because Elsie’s aunt had joined the Immaculate Heart order, the sisters agreed to allow Elsie Price to live with them at the old Convent School, located where Mission College Preparatory School now stands.

Boys weren’t allowed to attend the school until the 1920s.

Drury James (1827-1910) and James (1821-1888) and Daniel Blackburn (1816-1901), founders of Paso Robles

Paso Robles is steeped in the history of law and order. James Blackburn became a leader of San Luis Obispo’s Committee of Vigilance in 1858 and was elected sheriff in 1859. He and his brother, Daniel, purchased the 26,000-acre El Paso de Robles Rancho for $8,000 and later formed a partnership with future Mayor Drury James, buying the Paso Robles Inn and Hot Springs.

James, owner of La Panza Ranch, briefly hosted his nephews, outlaws Frank and Jesse James, at La Panza Ranch.

When the Southern Pacific Railroad moved south from San Miguel, James and the Blackburns laid out the city of Paso Robles. They threw a barbecue and auctioned the lots on Nov. 17, 1886. Within about a year, the town’s population grew to more than 500.

This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 5:47 PM with the headline "San Luis Obispo County traces its roots to these influential leaders."