Counted among San Benito County’s numerous longtime residents is
Colleen Egland, who has seen first hand the changing face of the
community.
Counted among San Benito County’s numerous longtime residents is Colleen Egland, who has seen first hand the changing face of the community.
Egland, 61, moved with her family to Hollister in 1959, just before she was about to start high school.
“We’re from the San Joaquin area,” she said. “So I guess you could call me a valley girl. But I’ve been here so long that San Benito County is my real home.”
Egland’s family moved to San Benito County after her father was made Game Warden and, as such, Egland was raised to appreciate the unique natural make-up of the community.
“I got to see a lot of beautiful country as a child,” she said. “Some of it isn’t there anymore, and some of it is just hard to get to. But back in those days, the game warden had a key to every ranch in the county, in case something went wrong, so my father took me to a lot of interesting places. I believe he had a patrol about 90 miles long and 120 miles wide.”
As a teenager, Egland enjoyed what small town life had to offer her.
“There were about 900 kids attending the high school at the time,” she said. “You could fit us all into the auditorium. Everyone was really close, and when we graduated, a bunch of us went to San Benito College, which was right across the street from the high school at the time.”
Egland spent her second year of college taking classes through Gavilan College near the airport, before transferring to San Jose State and graduating in home economics.
Before graduation, Egland worked a slew of jobs typical of girls and young women at the time: at A&W, which she says today is virtually unchanged from when she was a kid, and at Foster’s Freeze, which used to occupy the land where the El Grullense taqueria sits today. After college she worked as a teller and taught Head Start classes for pre-schoolers.
“Out of all that, though,” she said facetiously. “Making those Foster’s Freeze ice cream cones was probably the biggest challenge of my career. It’s nearly impossible to make them come out the right way.”
Egland chose to stay and raise her children in Hollister, Anna and Thor, who also live in town today. Egland actively pursues quilting, a hobby she picked up in her early teens, and genealogy.
“Personally, genealogy means a lot to me,” she said. “If you don’t write down your own history, it’s just going to be lost.”
Egland has traced her family history to pre-Civil War times. Her family, she believes, came to California immediately after the Gold Rush – “when things had settled down a bit” – to take advantage of the opportunities afforded in a developing state.
After 46 years in the county, Egland says there is nowhere else she’d rather be. While she hardly begrudges Hollister’s growth, she does admit to missing the slower pace and tight-knit community the town once afforded residents.
“Not so long ago you couldn’t walk down Main Street without saying hello to everyone you came across,” she said. “We were told that a few years before we moved to town, cattle was driven down that same street. It’s good for things to change, but sometimes you don’t miss the way things were until they’re already gone.”
