Santa Barbara County CA Archives Photo Place.....Arrellanes Adobe, Guadalupe 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 6, 2006, 11:19 pm

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ARRELLANES ADOBE 
Guadalupe, Santa Barbara County

History and Description:

The present community of Guadalupe owes its location to the Arrellanes Ranch
house, and its name to the Spanish Land Grant which Governor Juan Alvarado
deeded to Diego Olivera, later a mayor of Santa Barbara, and Teodoro Arrellanes
in March of 1840.

The ranch comprised some 32,408 acres of rich bottomland at the mouth of the
Santa Maria River, extending nine miles inland and as far south as Casmalia
Canyon, where Diego's brother Antonio had a smaller land grant.

The town which grew up around this adobe has had quite a -checkered career.
Guadalupe had about 100 shacks in 1872, the year Santa Barbara started to boom,
and officially came into being in 1873 when John Dunbar opened the U. 5. Post
Office there.

Bandits are said to have used the Arrellanes as a hideout in the 1850's, and
according to local stories from the local residents, strangers still show up at
odd times of the day or night with mysterious looking maps and start digging for
outlaw treasure in the immediate vicinity.

For about twenty years Diego Olivera and Teodoro Arrellanes enjoyed a vast
amount of wealth from the thousands of cattle that grazed on their Guadalupe
Ranch, but they suffered tremendous losses during the draught of the early
1860's, as did many other Spanish grant owners, and by 1867, the ranch had
passed into the hands of the wealty Estudillo family of the San Francisco Bay area.

That year, 1867, John B. Ward, husband of one of the Estudillo girls, came to
the ranch and began farming operations, building a two-story adobe next door to
the existing Arrellanes Adobe.  These two buildings later became the center of
the town.

A few months later, the new owners began to suffer financial difficulties, GO
they borrowed a large amount of money from a Frenchman named Theodore LeRoy, who
established drygoods stores in Sacramento and other cities.  When these stores
began to prosper, he began investing in real estate.

As time went on, LeRoy had lent in excess of what the ranch was worth, so he
tried to collect the full amount, but was told there was no money to pay the
mortgage. Consequently, LeRoy acquired the ranch through a deed dated October
18, 1870.

LeRoy immediately sold portions of the ranch, thus bringing in the first arrival
of farmers and dairymen. The Arrellanes Adobe and the two-story adobe next door
built by Ward became the center of the town.

In 1888, a dairyman, William C. Stokes, bought the historic old adobe and
installed a sheet iron roof over the original shingles which helped preserve the
building for many years.

There is no known floor plan of the adobe building available.  It was
constructed of adobe walls and had a wood shingle roof.  The final roof was
sheet iron applied some fifty years ago, which preserved the building through
the years.  The windows were the double-hung type divided into six lights each
section. The front and two sides of the building had an open porch typical of
ranch houses which led to the living and dining rooms.

The Arrellanes Adobe was occupied until a few years ago by Mr. and Mrs. Angel
Bourbon when it was condemned as unsafe by the building department. 
Consequently, the building was demolished a year ago.

Sources:
Tompkins, W. A.; Santa Barbara Yesterday:  Santa Barbara, McNally & Loftin, 1962 
Carlson, V. A.:  This Is Our Valley:  Los Angeles, Westernlore Press, 1959 
Louisiana Dart, Curator, San Luis Obispo County Historical Museum 
Guadalupe residents 
Minerva Library Club, Lincoln & Boone, Santa Maria


Additional Comments:
This is one of three drawings of structures outside San Luis Obispo County

Extracted from

Discovering San Luis Obispo County
by
Carleton M. Winslow


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