A Brief History

Commonly referred to as "the Central Coast," the area is more rural and agricultural than many other coastal regions in California. Father Junipero Serra founded the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in 1772 and the Mission is today an active part of downtown San Luis Obispo (popularly referred to as SLO or SLO-town). The small size of the county's communities, scattered along the beaches, coastal hills, and mountains of the Santa Lucia range, provides a wide variety of coastal and inland hill ecologies to support many kinds of fishing, agriculture, and tourist activities.

The mainstays of the economy are California Polytechnic State University with its almost 20,000 students, tourism, and agriculture. San Luis Obispo County is the third largest producer of wine in California, surpassed only by Sonoma and Napa Counties. Wine grapes are by far the largest agricultural crop in the county, and the wine production they support creates a direct economic impact and a growing wine country vacation industry.

The town of San Simeon is located at the foot of the hill where newspaper publisher  William Randolph Hearst built the famed Hearst Castle. Other coastal towns (listed from North to South) include Cambria, Cayucos, Morro Bay, and Los Osos (Baywood Park is considered to be Los Osos by the majority of locals). The city of Morro Bay and the village of Los Osos share the bay that has been made famous by Morro Rock. Surprisingly, the Village of Los Osos has a bigger population by roughly 4 thousand residents. These cities and villages are located northwest of San Luis Obispo city, andAvila Beach and the Five Cities to the south: Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach, Oceano,Pismo Beach and Shell Beach. Nipomo, just south of the Five Cities, borders northern Santa Barbara County. Inland, the cities of Paso Robles, Templeton, and Atascaderolie along the Salinas River, near the Paso Robles wine region. San Luis Obispo lies south of Atascadero and north of the Five Cities region. Just south of Cambria lies Harmony, one of the smallest towns in California with a population of 18.

 

The founding of the San Luis Obispo Tribune in 1869 by Walter Murray signaled the beginning of U.S. consolidation within the County. New buildings went up, with clapboards milled in Northern California, sandstone from the Los Berros area in the southern part of the County, granite from Bishop’s Peak, and brick fired in the brickyards of Chinese-born labor contractor Ah Louis. Dairy cattle were first raised in the Edna Valley on the former Corral de Piedra Rancho by the Steele brothers in the late 1860s. As dairy farming spread to the North Coast, it generated a need for greater maritime commerce. The Piedras Blancas Lighthouse was built north of San Simeon to help protect seagoing commerce and the shore whaling industry. Sea traffic increased, with landings at the People’s Wharf and Captain John Harford’s Wharf at Avila, at Captain James Cass’s wharf at Cayucos, and at Senator George Hearst’s wharf at San Simeon.

 

The success of the Pacific Coast Railway and rumors of the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad sparked a land boom in the 1880s; at about the same time, the discovery of gold in the La Panza district in the eastern part of the County brought a rush of miners to the area.

In 1920, Mission San Luis Obispo suffered a major fire. To raise funds for the restoration of the Mission, Father Daniel Keenan established the community celebration of La Fiesta de las Flores in 1925. This event became a tradition that lasted until 1995. The County’s agricultural diversity shielded it from the worst of the Great Depression of the 1930s. There were difficult times, however, for many of those who came from other areas looking for work. It was near a migrant camp in Nipomo that photographer Dorothea Lange, working for the Farm Security Administration, took her famous photograph entitled “Migrant Mother.” The County benefited from such Depression-era federal programs as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Through the involvement of these agencies, the County received a new Courthouse, flood-control projects, and highway improvements.

 

With the onset of World War II, our County’s transportation links and open land areas were deemed useful by the U.S. War Department, which located training camps in the area: Camp Roberts and Camp San Luis Obispo, as well as a naval training base at Morro Bay and a Coast Guard station near Cambria. These camps brought into the County nearly 100,000 military personnel, some with their families. Many liked the area so much that they returned to settle here after the war.

 

The County grew rapidly after World War II, with military personnel training for the Korean War helping to maintain the boom in the early 1950s. Growth during the World War II era had shown the need for more water. Santa Margarita Dam was built in the 1940s, followed by the building of the Nacimiento, San Antonio, and Lopez Dams in the 1950s and 60s. Even now, a narrow balance must be maintained between existing supplies of water and increases in population.