Happy birthday: For 150 years and counting, newspapers have told tales of life in Cambria
As we prepare to ring out a more-than-challenging 2021 after a tremendously tough 2020, those of us on the North Coast have one more significant occasion to mark.
Well, two of them, actually.
As of 2021, Cambria has had a local newspaper for 150 years.
And The Cambrian passed its 90th birthday, having been launched in 1931.
In any business, that’s an accomplishment. But in today’s topsy-turvy, tumultuous world of disseminating the news, I think that’s remarkable.
The past
If we think Cambria is a small town now, we’re right, with a 2020 census count of 5,678.
It wasn’t always that way. For a time after the town was established in 1866, it was the county’s second-largest commerce center.
The Cambria Development Company arrived in the 1930s, built the Cambria Pines Lodge, bought up ranchland and subdivided it into about 12,000 lots, many of them only 25 feet wide.
But then, that size was OK. For those lots were expected to be for campsites or tiny cabins, because everybody knew that nobody would consider actually LIVING in Cambria — it was too far away, too hard to get to, and the long route to it from anywhere then was certifiably miserable.
When I moved to Cambria in 1971, there were about 1,500 residents here. Marine Terrace was mostly open lots, with a few “crazy people” like my mom who had decided to brave the mist and rust, mildew, wind and maintenance problems of living within feet of the waves crashing against the bluffs.
But on to the newspaper log.
In April 1871, Peter Forrester, then a mining engineer, launched the town’s first, if short-lived newspaper, the Cambria Circular. He went on to become a surveyor, lawyer and public official (including district attorney, city clerk and superintendent of schools).
The Circular was followed in 1888, when 22-year-old Roma Jackson launched The Cambria Critic, in 1916 by Clyde A Meacham’s Cambria Courier and in 1930 by prolific publisher Timothy Brownhill, with The Cambria News.
Then in 1931, Marcus Waltz launched The Cambrian.
It’s been going ever since.
(For 17 months, from October 1987 to March 1989, Sheila Warren published The Cambria Independent, and for a time, the Coast Union High School newspaper was inserted into The Cambrian.)
Many of those priceless documents are now housed at the Cambria Historical Society’s Moure Resource Center, because when the Cambrian’s office closed down in 2018, some of us stuck to our guns and insisted that the archival newspapers belonged to the community and needed to stay in town.
Reporting the news
In all those decades, reporters and editors documented so many of the forces that shaped the town we live in today.
Just for grins, giggles and memories, here’s a very partial list of some of those forces, events and happenings, in no particular order of consecutiveness or importance.
There was unsettling and tragic news, of course, with the disastrous downtown fires in the early days, other fires, droughts, floods, quakes, accidents.
But the papers’ emphasis was always on the town, its progress and most of all, its people.
Industries? How about cinnabar mining, lumbering, dairying, ranching and tourism?
Especially during the war years, the military had a huge impact on Cambria, from the occupation of West Village to the establishment and later decommissioning of the Cambria Air Force Radar Base and creation of the housing neighborhood built to accommodate those airmen and their families (now dubbed Pacific Pines).
There was the sinking of the Montebello oil tanker in 1941, not too far offshore. Many local men and women joined the war efforts and went to war or volunteered right here in town.
Notable construction? Three piers (yeah, two are gone). The Piedras Blancas Light Station in 1874, declared in 2005 to be a national Outstanding Natural Area and part of the National Landscape Conservation System. The aforementioned Cambria Pines Lodge. A monumental hilltop estate that became a state historical monument and house museum known around the world as Hearst Castle. Nitt Witt Ridge. A disassembled war-surplus building that became the Veterans Memorial Building.
A better road connected the North Coast to the county seat in San Luis Obispo, shortening the two-day journey to a more manageable timeframe. Blimp rides. Hot air balloon launches, about where Wood Drive is now.
Then came the state highway designation. The Roosevelt Highway connecting Cambria to Carmel and the Monterey Bay area. The relocation of Highway 1 through downtown Cambria to where it is now. The improvements to Highway 46 that made it so much easier to get to and from Paso Robles and the Central Valley.
Protecting the land? Just to name a few of the conservation easements and outright purchases: Estero Bluffs, Harmony Headlands, Fiscalini Ranch Preserve and the Hearst Conservation Easement, Covell Ranch and various smaller parcels, some owned by Greenspace — The Cambria Land Trust and scattered lots and areas that the Cambria Community Services District took over from The Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County. The formation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the California Coastal Monument offshore, the California Coastal Trail and various other designations.
Entertainment? In the early days, there was the Cambria rodeo (pronounced ro-day-o, if you please).
Archivist Melody Coe, current president of the Cambria Historical Society’s board, said the town “was really famous in the rodeo world. It was a big part of the headline news after the paper started in 1931, with stories of the ranchers bringing the cattle down Bridge and Lee streets from the Hearst and Phelan ranches. That’s why there are all those white fences along those streets, to keep the cattle out of people’s yards.”
The rodeo was followed by other events and celebrations, including for July 4 and then Pinedorado in 1949. The original spelling, by the way, was Pine-dorado.
Coe shared a June 2, 1949, article from The Cambrian about why the Labor Day event is so named. The piece cites the conclusion of a naming contest, ironically won by Mrs. W.W. Becker of Hollywood, who had been visiting the town the previous weekend.
If Pine-dorado translated to “gilded pine,” the story rather lyrically continued, the reader should recall that “the gold and precious stones of this community is its scenic beauty … pine-covered hills and its ideal situation against a setting of blue ocean.”
And if Pinedorado still seems an unusual name for a three-day Lions Club celebration, consider some of the other contest entries listed in the article: Pine Tree Jamboree, Cambria Capers, Days of Cisco Kid, Rip-roarin’ Roundup and even the Cam-L-Carnival.
Yeah, Pinedorado’s just fine, thank you.
There also were other amusements, like the 1985 filming of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Commando,” and in 1990, “Arachnophobia.” The prolific productions at Jim and Olga Buckley’s Pewter Plough Playhouse. The Soldier Factory. Visits to Exotic Gardens’ rare collection of cactus and succulents.
School sports were very often front-page news.
And never forget the natural entertainment from the elephant seals, Hearst zebras, otters, whales, seals, sea lions and a gazillion birds, from California condors and eagles to the tiniest sea birds.
The people
But in the end, Cambria’s newspapers covered its people.
As Coe said, “Cambria certainly has been an active community in caring for ourselves, for sure.”
There were a host of clubs, nonprofits, groups and people banded together toward a common goal, such as preventing development of East West Ranch by buying it and turning it into the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve.
To list and describe all of those would take an entire newspaper.
I take great pride in the fact that The Cambrian is still here. No, its print version certainly isn’t as thick as it used to be.
But nearly all of the news within The Cambrian is also available online (www.sanluisobispo.com), and quite often in our sister daily paper, The Tribune.
We owe our longevity to you, our readers and advertisers. We can’t survive without all of you, and never forget that you are appreciated.
When I joined the paper as a part-time reporter (after spending a decade as a columnist), our staff included an editor, news editor, sports reporter, full-time photographer, four staff writers, various interns and “stringers,” and our advertising and circulation staffs.
Now it’s just me, covering from Big Sur to Cayucos, and sometimes farther down the county’s North Coast.
But as long y’all keep reading, subscribing, advertising and telling me what’s happening in our town, I’ll keep on doing what I do, trying to keep you up to date about as many goings-on as I can.
Happy anniversaries, Cambria!
