Tiny SLO County town had a bad reputation. See scenes of ‘lawless’ San Miguel
Perhaps more than any other town in the county, San Miguel has gone through wide-ranging cycles.
Drought, agricultural downturns and fires took a toll on San Miguel, a California mission town dating back to 1797, while other county towns grew at a faster rate.
Being at the fringe of county economic centers limited growth. Boom time came when the first Southern Pacific rails first came to the county in 1886.
The most recent boom would come when Camp Roberts became a major U.S. Army training facility during both World War II and the Korean War.
In 1945, 45,000 troops were quartered at the camp. Almost 10 times that number came through the camp during the course of World War II.
Longtime resident and Tribune reporter Phil Dirkx was stationed at the camp from 1952-53.
He said of San Miguel in a story Jan. 1, 2006, “It was very lively. There were people on the street and it was lit up at night.”
For parts of San Miguel, that was the high watermark.
When the Korean War fighting ended, the camp drastically scaled back and eventually came under the administration of California National Guard.
When I started as a photographer at the then Telegram-Tribune in the early 1980s a visitor could see a town caught in a bubble from the 1950s.
Shady Rest Motel cottages advertised that all rooms had a radio.
The closed Sims hotel carried a sign advertising $3-a-night rooms.
It was clear that money for fancy neon signs downtown was thirty years earlier.
The town that was once busy enough to have their own jail and constable now featured many boarded up buildings.
Most of the still open old-highway businesses were founded before the freeway passed them by.
History buffs on the freeway would stop at the Mission on the south end of town, but that could be done without going through the old business district.
Gas stations closed along the old highway and moved to the freeway exits on the west of town.
Meanwhile, dogs waited patiently for their owners outside the Elkhorn Bar.
Shoppers bought groceries walking down aisles on the uneven wooden floors at Witcosky’s Market.
Recently the true crime podcast, “Crime Junkie” retold the story of a tragedy from 1980 that was visited on the town.
Teresa Lynn “Terry” Flores, 5, and Martha Jo Ann “Marty” Mezo, 4, disappeared shortly after 11 a.m. on May 17, 1980.
They were later found murdered, a crime that is still under investigation.
Occasionally the newspaper has done personality profiles on San Miguel.
The following was from Sept. 9, 1980, by Ted Jackovics. Tony Hertz recorded a series of evocative photos, many of which are published here for first time.
San Miguel: Old worries persist
Tiny town with dusty image
San Miguel is about 7 miles and 30 years from the nearest town.
How to keep it that way while dealing with the town’s 20% longstanding headaches, rowdies and speculators is what postmaster Sharon Rose says is on her customers’ minds these days.
Across the street from the tiny post office was a 20-year-old, shirtless man, who was leaning on the open tailgate of a blue Dodge rental car. He was holding a sweating red and white can of Budweiser.
Raymond “Rock’N’Roll” Robustelli of Oakland — and more recently, Folsom State Penitentiary — had been in San Miguel for only 20 minutes, he said, hardly long enough to personify the town’s reputation as a lawless, anything-goes place.
But Rock’N’Roll had a good start on developing a headache of his own.
“Looks OK, looks OK to me,” he said to two new acquaintances who live in San Miguel as he looked up and down Mission Street. He could see three blocks of storefronts, many of which were boarded up.
His companions, a muscular man in his mid-20’s who was also shirtless in the noonday sun and his wife, a slender woman with long brown hair, knew others in the town who had spent time in state prison.
“About 15 percent of the 750 people around here are ex-cons, but see, they’re making it, working in the fields and on construction,” the woman said.
“Oh they get rowdy, the whiskey drinkers, but when they get into scuffles, it’s only among their own,” she said taking Rock’N’Roll on his offer of the last can of the six-pack of beer.
Rock’N’Roll grabbed a t-shirt from the back seat of the car for himself and a terry cloth shirt from the trunk for the other man so the three could finish their conversation in the Elkhorn bar across the street.
“It’s one of only two places in town that serves hard liquor, and the other is definitely not a hangout,” the woman said, referring to the Park Garage and Saloon, the town’s only restaurant. The Park Garage opened almost a year ago in a carefully restored building that glows in the sunlight peeking through new, etched windows.
Within a half hour, the new friendships at the Elkhorn were sewn up over some beer and whiskey, and Rock’N’Roll convinced his two new friends to ride to Mexico with him.
Meanwhile, several blocks away in his restaurant, Vincent Sullivan sat with two customers.
“It’s obvious the town’s problem is negative publicity just because of lack of police protection,” Sullivan said, oblivious to the noise down the streets. “San Miguel is pretty much a wide-open town and has been for years.”
A group organized in the mid-70s to ask the county for increased sheriff’s patrols, but to no avail.
Some residents think a resident deputy sheriff would deter the rowdy element and burglars that have broken into more than residences. They point to the way Al Bryant held the town in check, before his job as town constable was phased out.
Sheriff George S. Whiting said the cost for 24-hour protection in San Miguel would be prohibitive, because of today’s salary and training costs. He said Thursday he would check the state law for possibilities of establishing private police service without creating a special police district.
Law enforcement problems are only one of the town’s perennial headaches. Speculators — and their possible role in giving the town its boarded-up image — are the other.
Townfolk define speculators as those who buy property for its long-term resale potential but don’t fix it up.
Such speculators own about 50 percent of the property in the town, said San Miguel real estate agent Emajon Smith.
The speculators’ label is not pinned on local real estate agent Richard Jones, who is building a 16-unit motel, or on Sullivan, the Templeton landscape-engineering contractor who bought a crumbling building and polished it into the swank Park Garage restaurant.
Sullivan, who said he was attracted to San Miguel because it has the lowest real estate prices in the county, said he’s planning to refurbish and reopen six of the main drags’ boarded-up store buildings. One of those may become a coffee house for teenagers.
“Sullivan’s great,” said Smith, who earlier this year was selling two-and three-bedroom homes in San Miguel for $32,000 to $40,000.
