Nipomo Stories
Nipomo has it's share of little urban (rural) legends. Many of them date back to the 1800's when the area was settled by the Spaniards and the anglos, doubtless the local tribe, the Chumash had their share of ancient tales. Here I have put in a few of the local tales I have heard.
The story of the old muskets
This story is somewhat odd,
and told to me second hand. Seems a fellow I know knew an old fellow who
hunted this area in the early part of this century. One time he was in
a rugged canyon slope in thick brush and oaks when he came upon an old
oak with two old muskets leaned against the tree cradled into one of the
branches. They were very old and rusted to an unworkable condition. Who
left them? And whatever happened to them, in the 1800 when those would
have been the weapon of note, one would NEVER have left them leaning against
a tree and wandered off without them. Was the story even true? I do not
know for sure, but there are many odd things that happen in these hills.
THE DAY THE REVENOOERS CAME
Back in the prohibition
days there was a quite a bit of moonshine made in these hills, one day
the revenooers came by to make their busts and caught a few of the local
boys dead-to-rights with their still. The canyon boys ran for the bushes
and their horses and made tracks quickly. The G men tried to follow in
their cars but soon gave up due to the danger of pressing these local 'outlaws'
on their home turf. I talked to a woman who's uncle was one of the old
boys with the still, she says he was an ornery raskel, and a local bar
has a couple bullet holes in the ceiling from an instance when someone
took his hat off his head and tossed it up on the wall onto a mounted deers
antlers, he got mad and pulled his pistol and shot the antlers off to retrieve
his hat. She says that the old timers in town still talk about the times
he and his brothers would ride into town on their horses cause most here
did not have cars till after the war.
Solomon Pico and the stolen
Gold
Now this story should not
be told at the risk of thousands of flatlanders coming to these hills to
dig for buried treasure. Back in the Spanish days here families loyal to
the Spanish King might get a land grant of tens of thousands of acres for
some service to the King. Solomon Picos family had such a grant, and they
owned much land on the Central Coast. When this state was absorbed into
the Union the new government did not necessarily recognize the old land
holdings, and solomon Picos' family lost most of their property. Feeling
bitter and alienated Solomon Pico took to robbing the Anglos and especially
the stagecoaches carrying gold from the goldfields to the North of us.
The legend of the
gold goes that Solomon Pico robbed a coach right outside Nipomo and took
the gold up our canyon. The next day the local marshal, having been summoned
from Santa Barbara was coming through the canyon to Nipomo to investigate,
he passed the Pico gang as they were coming out the opposit end of the
canyon, he waved and pretended he did not know who they were as they were
many and he was alone. But he did note that they did not have a case full
of gold as they were rumored to have taken. Did they bury their treasure
in this canyon? Is the story even true? Or did they divvy up the loot and
have it in seperate saddlebags? No treasure is rumored to have been found
yet, but don't come here to dig holes in the ground, we don't want foxholes
all around here. OK, if you want you could dig holes where I want trees
planted, but I want them 3x3 feet and two feet deep on equadistant spacing.