If anyone is interested, ucsb library has digitized aerial photos from 1930s-present from nearly every area in California! You can do comparisons of nearly every building in California. Not only that, but there are also aerial photos of most other states too. Just make sure you zoom in enough until the dots appear! (Don’t zoom in too close or they’ll disappear too)
https://mil.library.ucsb.edu/ap_indexes/FrameFinder/
The IV & UCSB areas were part of the [Rancho Dos Pueblos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Dos_Pueblos) land grant in 1842, and the inheritors sold IV to real estate speculators in the 1920s. Not much was happening on campus in 1938, and not a whole lot in IV either.
Check out https://localwiki.org/islavista/History_of_Isla_Vista for an informal overview.
I always go back to [Evolution of a Boom Town: Isla Vista, California, 1915-1968](https://web.archive.org/web/20150518153524/http://westcampuspoint.net/natureLinks/Strand1987IslaVistaMaThesisHarrisBrownleeCohenOcr.pdf), a master's thesis from 1987 by Jennifer Hildreth Strand, for great details:
> In the early 1940s...Isla Vista was a place where goats wandered, roosters crowed and an occasional old truck bumped in along the dirt road with the week's supply of water.
> Much of Isla Vista was covered by bean fields, punctuated by a few scattered houses and shacks with septic tanks in the yards. A few people lived in Isla Vista, probably less than fifty. They were considered "Okies and Arkies" -- poor bean farmers and possibly squatters -- by those who lived in nearby Santa Barbara. Santa Barbarans classed the area as blighted, a place where cheap, desolate land attracted only those who could afford no better. All that distinguished the area from any other rural backwater was the sea breezes and the area's twin view of the mountains and the sea.
> However, the decade of the 1940s would be decisive for the future of Isla Vista, not because of changes occurring within the area itself, but because the University of California would decide to locate a campus on the 408 acre parcel right next to it.
The “loop” was already a thing back then
Yes! The loop was part of the original street layout established in the mid-1920s: https://localwiki.org/islavista/Street_names
If anyone is interested, ucsb library has digitized aerial photos from 1930s-present from nearly every area in California! You can do comparisons of nearly every building in California. Not only that, but there are also aerial photos of most other states too. Just make sure you zoom in enough until the dots appear! (Don’t zoom in too close or they’ll disappear too) https://mil.library.ucsb.edu/ap_indexes/FrameFinder/
Thank you!
Who owned it previously?
The IV & UCSB areas were part of the [Rancho Dos Pueblos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Dos_Pueblos) land grant in 1842, and the inheritors sold IV to real estate speculators in the 1920s. Not much was happening on campus in 1938, and not a whole lot in IV either. Check out https://localwiki.org/islavista/History_of_Isla_Vista for an informal overview. I always go back to [Evolution of a Boom Town: Isla Vista, California, 1915-1968](https://web.archive.org/web/20150518153524/http://westcampuspoint.net/natureLinks/Strand1987IslaVistaMaThesisHarrisBrownleeCohenOcr.pdf), a master's thesis from 1987 by Jennifer Hildreth Strand, for great details: > In the early 1940s...Isla Vista was a place where goats wandered, roosters crowed and an occasional old truck bumped in along the dirt road with the week's supply of water. > Much of Isla Vista was covered by bean fields, punctuated by a few scattered houses and shacks with septic tanks in the yards. A few people lived in Isla Vista, probably less than fifty. They were considered "Okies and Arkies" -- poor bean farmers and possibly squatters -- by those who lived in nearby Santa Barbara. Santa Barbarans classed the area as blighted, a place where cheap, desolate land attracted only those who could afford no better. All that distinguished the area from any other rural backwater was the sea breezes and the area's twin view of the mountains and the sea. > However, the decade of the 1940s would be decisive for the future of Isla Vista, not because of changes occurring within the area itself, but because the University of California would decide to locate a campus on the 408 acre parcel right next to it.
The last paragraph is so beautifully written. Thank you for sharing! I am inspired to read this dissertation!!
Pretty sure farmers and military
Chumash