Take heed of history
San Benito County’s history is not a long one. Historians
familiar with Mexico, Europe or the Eastern U.S. might sneer at the
notion that something only a century old is historic.
Take heed of history
San Benito County’s history is not a long one. Historians familiar with Mexico, Europe or the Eastern U.S. might sneer at the notion that something only a century old is historic.
But with the first European settlement in San Benito County only 210 years ago, with the establishment in 1797 of Mission San Juan Bautista, our history is proximate. We live more closely to our history than those who can look back on millennia.
It is possible to press one’s fingers into the dog’s track marking one of the adobe floor tiles in the mission sanctuary and envision the day a stray cur wandered through the scene. Hollister offers a textbook tour of architecture through the Victorian period, into arts and crafts and Italianate styles to rambling ranch-style structures, with every experiment and adventure in style in between.
Much of our historic heritage is safe. The mission and surrounding structures are protected by the Diocese of Monterey and the state Department of Parks and Recreation. The rest of San Juan Bautista is looked over by a city Cultural Resources Board and restrictive planning codes. A sweeping historic district centered around Monterey Street offers assurance that Hollister’s core also will retain its historic context and value.
But the rest of San Benito County still waits for such attention.
The notion of considering some historical protection for San Benito County is timely. A trip last Sunday through Tres Pinos revealed a “for sale” sign hanging from the awning covering the boardwalk outside the 19th Hole tavern.
A barroom might seem an unlikely place to mark as historic, but the 19th Hole is not an ordinary bar.
The roadhouse along Hwy. 25 takes its name from nearby Bolado Golf Course, but its theme is anything but wrapped up in the sport. The false front Western building houses a cowboy honky-tonk, pure and simple. The names on the restroom doors, spelled out in beer caps, identify them by livestock names. The creaky wooden floor emanates a rich perfume created by time, spilled beer and tobacco smoke. The building’s weathered paint sets off a hole left by a shotgun blast through its front wall.
The ceiling of the bar was festooned with a fortune in autographed dollar bills, tacked up there with a neat trick involving a silver dollar and a quick flip of the wrist. One staff member’s brush with fame came when he celebrated the end of the draft and his 21st year by adding his own weathered draft card to the collection.
The 19th Hole has been closed more often than not in recent years, but its historic integrity remains uncompromised.
The rest of Tres Pinos, an unincorporated village a few minutes south of Hollister, is an eclectic mix. The town once bustled as the end of a rail line that brought feed to the livery stables of the Bay Area. The Hollister High Haybalers take their name from the area’s role as the Hay Capital of the World.
Today, it combines trailer homes with immaculate Victorian cottages. A barn at the end of Fifth Street is one of the most photographed monuments in the county. A few feet of the original rail line exist. One of the hay barns that once filled the town now serves as a feed store and Western emporium. A tiny motor court, recent home to a palm reader, reminds passersby of the first decades of automobile travel.
And today, there’s no county designation recognizing any of these buildings as significant. Given Tres Pinos’ organic, patchwork growth, a restrictive blanket designation would certainly be inappropriate.
But historic recognition need not be applied to an entire area. The county desperately needs some mechanism to prompt us all to take a second look before we think about bulldozing that which contributes to making San Benito a special place.
