Songs of the Wilderness

Several years ago local author Bob Burtness showed me a 1926 map of the Santa Barbara Natural Forest, the forerunner to the Los Padres National Forest. One of the things that caught my eye was an item labeled Mono Ranger Station. Bob explained that it was the Mono Adobe, but that it had been torn down. In asking around very little seemed to be known about what had happened to it or where it was specifically located, and so it just got added to my list of things to find out more about. However, this year while going through back copies of the Santa Barbara News-Press, I came across a 1966 news article that mentioned Mono Adobe. It was that article that got me motivated to try find out what happened to the structure and where it had been located.

This was the first, first person article I submitted to the News-Press for publication. Only instead of running what I submitted, they edited it, changing every first person reference to third person, creating an article that made little sense. 

The article appeared in section A of the October 12th, 2013 edition of the Santa Barbara News-Press.

As part of the process to shift to the column from third person to first person I reworked the original article, leaving out the longer hike description and adding in more content around the actual search, and submitted it with three other sample articles. 

The reworked version appears here, Trail Quest: The Search for Mono Adobe.

Mono Adobe, 1961, courtesy Bob Burtness

This was also the first article that Maps.com produced a locator map for. Although the News-Press didn’t run the map, it’s included here below for reference.

Map courtesy Maps.com