Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally ran in CVN Vol. 26, No. 41, on July 2, 2020. Part I of this series originally appeared in CVN Vol. 26, No. 24, on June 24, 2020; the updated version of Part I ran in CVN Vol. 32, No. 12, on Dec. 11, 2025.
Santiago Campos, known to Spanish-speaking Carpinterians as “Chago” and to the English-speaking community as “Jim” — yes, this is my grandfather and namesake — came to Carpinteria in 1928, settling initially in Old Town. The family rented a house from the Manriquez family near Pear Street along the Coast Highway (Carpinteria Avenue). Campos was looking to build the family home when he purchased a plot of land on W. Ninth Street in the cul-de-sac nicknamed “Hollywood” in 1934. He needed lumber to build on it, and he was in luck. The Catholic Church was in the process of relocating from its abandoned church, La Iglesia San Jose on Upson Road, to a new church on Seventh Street. Campos paid $50 for the right to tear down the church and claim the lumber.
Borrowing a large hay wagon pulled by two horses from his neighbor, Eugene McCafferty (father of John McCafferty, author of “Aliso School: ‘For the Mexican children’”), Campos gathered a work crew: his sons Luis, David and Sal (Chava), plus neighbors Rodolfo Jimenez, and Lolo and Pablo Marquez. Sal, an eight-year-old at the time, remembers his dad wanting to roll a cigarette, so he handed him the reins of the horses on the way to Upson Road. The horses had a mind of their own, however, and did not heed Sal’s prodding, much to the youngster’s chagrin…