A powerful earthquake struck just after 6:40 a.m. on June 29, 1925, its epicenter just off the Santa Barbara coast. Downtown Santa Barbara was devastated. As for its neighbor to the east, headlines varied widely. “CARPINTERIA HAD BUT LITTLE DAMAGE,” said the Ventura Morning Free Press. The Carpinteria Herald, by contrast, declared that “QUAKE CAUSES GREAT DAMAGE IN CARPINTERIA” and characterized it as “the greatest disaster that has befallen this section of the country since the advent of the white man here.”
The Herald got carried away — even its own story didn’t live up to the headline. To begin with, no serious injuries were reported in Carpinteria. The Palms got through “in surprisingly good shape,” the paper said, with only a few cracks in the exterior, while the Hickey brothers’ building on Linden sustained little more than a broken display window. The Herald said that the Town Hall on Linden, however, was “in ruins.” Actually, the building needed substantial repairs but remained standing.
Elsewhere in town, damage was scattered and fairly modest. Windows broke at several other stores, a bank and a service station. Bottles shattered in the Carpinteria Pharmacy. Downed wires started a brief fire in an awning. Many chimneys toppled, and one nearly crushed Dr. Jerome F. Tubbs as he sat on his porch with the morning paper. The damage in Santa Barbara disrupted Carpinteria’s phone service. Meanwhile, landslides at Rincon cut off rail and telegraph communication to the south…