Knapp's Castle

Located not far from of the subject of my last post (Chumash Painted Cave), is another one of those places that few have heard of and even fewer have actually seen. Just about 100 years ago a very wealthy industrialist named George Owen Knapp decided to build himself a little mountain retreat (on about 160 mountain top acres).  He already owned one home in the nearby town of Montecito (on a measly 100 acres). Montecito is a perennial member of the most wealthy towns (per capita) in the United States. I guess that is no surprise, because Mr. Knapp was one of the founders of Union Carbide Company. If you haven't heard of that company, you are probably very young. Over the years, I believe it has morphed into Dow Chemical Company. Don't hold that against him though, because he was a philanthropist of the first order.

Craftsmen and building materials were imported from Europe to complete Mr. Knapp's castle. Apparently, the "retreat" consisted of five bedrooms, observatory, studios, cottages, servant quarters, and a superintendent's house. Running water was provided by nearby waterfalls.  (photo credit: Unknown. In addition to seeing it many times on the Internet, it is also at GeorgeOwenKnapp.com) 

This is what it looked like when we were there a few months ago. I'd heard that there was security on site and the property had been purchased and the ruins were going to be demolished. Is that possible? I'd also heard the county of Santa Barbara refused to issue the required permits. We had no inkling of what we would find once we got there.  I apologize in advance for the inconsistency of the photos. The sky was huge, bright and harsh. 

If you look at the two buildings to the far left of the fist photo. You will see that this stonework is all that is left of them. The whole place was destroyed in a wild fire in 1940. The Knapp family sold it to a ultra-famous German soprano Lotte Lehamm 46 days before the fire. 

There was a guy working on the property while we were there, but he didn't give us a second look. If you look at the stone work, you can see that he has been doing some repairs to the original work. It didn't look like anything was being torn down.

For those who know a little about the area, the water in the background is Lake Cachuma. The famous town of Solvang is about 12 miles beyond the lake. Solvang is a Danish community established in 1911. It is a great place to visit. For me, that means visit no more than once every 5-10 years. I say that because it never changes.  I'll shut up now and let you look at the photos.

I told her not to drive the Jeep so hard! She didn't listen!

Seriously, I have no idea why, but this jeep was sitting on the property.

This is the dirt road leading to the place. Although it is locked, there is clearly not a "no trespassing" sign to be seen. Besides, we could squeeze by the tall pole on the right.

After about 10 minutes we came to another locked gate. But read the sign! "Right To Pass Revocable By Owner."  There was another sign at the ruins that said:  "This is Private Property and Under 24-Hour Video Surveillance." It also said that they would give a reward to anyone who reported acts of vandalism.  In other words, "look around, but don't screw anything up! I have no idea who owns this place, but I love them!

George Owen Knapp

Thanks for using so much stonework George!

---------------------------

In Addition:

My friend, the lovely and talented Alex J. Cavanaugh, has just released his latest Science Fiction thriller...

A Storm gathers across the galaxy...

Commanding the Cassan base on Tgren, Byron thought he'd put the days of battle behind him.  As a galaxy-wide war encroaches upon the desert planet, Byron's ideal life is threatened and he's caught between the Tgrens and the Cassans.

After enemy ships attack the desert planet, Byron discovers another battle within his own family.  the declaration of war between all ten races triggers nightmares in his son, threatening to destroy the boy's mind.

Meanwhile the ancient alien ship is transmitting a code that might signal the end of all life in the galaxy. And the mysterious probe that almost destroyed Tgren twenty years ago could return.  As his world beings to crumble, Byron suspects a connection. The storm is about to break, and Byron is caught in the middle...

----------------------------------

CassaStorm by Alex J. Cavanaugh

Science Fiction - Space Opera/Adventure

Print ISBN 9781939844002

E-book ISBN 9781939844019

-------------------

You can find CassaStorm and the other books in this series at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Amazon Kindle and Goodreads.

-------------------

Also available:

.

.

Chumash Painted Cave Pictographs

In addition to ghost towns, hiking, exploring back roads, mountains, Route 66 and all things desert related, We also LOVE American Indian history, ruins and rock art. So today, we'll take a little break from the desert posts.

Chumash Painted Cave is probably the smallest state park in California. It's in the coastal mountains above the beautiful city of Santa Barbara.

The road up here isn't very wide and there really isn't room for two cars side by side.

Just off the road and up about 20 steps is the cave. The Chumash tribe and the state locked the cave up decades ago to preserve the pictographs. I thought it was going to be hard to take photos because the grid of the ironwork looked fairly small.

This is why they keep people away from it. I was so happily surprised that the images were still so vibrant. There is also some very old scratched in names and dates in the cave. Early graffiti...

Although the experts have no idea exactly what these symbols and images represent, they believe that they were created by Shaman or priests when they came to the cave searching for power or spiritual strength as they tried to influence supernatural beings and forces to intervene in human affairs.

The creators of these images used charcoal, red ochre and powdered sea shells. As the early tribes lost their way of lives, the meanings of many of their symbols was also lost.  The Chumash people have been in this area for thousands of years. The exact time these images were made is not known, but at a minimum they are many hundreds of years old.

All of the images were amazing, but I was really drawn to the somewhat scary looking image in the upper right hand corner of the photos.

I took this photo because I thought these odd shapes were pretty interesting. I'm sure some of them were formed by nature, I wonder if they were originally "cupules." The link will take you to a good example of "cupule" rock art.  Cupules are believed to be one of the most ancient forms of rock art.

Look at the left hand side of the photo. There is a pictograph OUTSIDE of the cave. I didn't notice it at all. I wonder if it is original. We'll be there fairly soon and I'll try to find out exactly what it is.
..................................

More Importantly:

The lovely and talented Alex J. Cavanaugh has just released his latest Science Fiction thriller...

A Storm gathers across the galaxy...

Commanding the Cassan base on Tgren, Byron thought he'd put the days of battle behind him.  As a galaxy-wide war encroaches upon the desert planet, Byron's ideal life is threatened and he's caught between the Tgrens and the Cassans.

After enemy ships attack the desert planet, Byron discovers another battle within his own family.  the declaration of war between all ten races triggers nightmares in his son, threatening to destroy the boy's mind.

Meanwhile the ancient alien ship is transmitting a code that might signal the end of all life in the galaxy. And the mysterious probe that almost destroyed Tgren twenty years ago could return.  As his world beings to crumble, Byron suspects a connection. The storm is about to break, and Byron is caught in the middle...

----------------------------------

CassaStorm by Alex J. Cavanaugh

Science Fiction - Space Opera/Adventure

Print ISBN 9781939844002

E-book ISBN 9781939844019

-------------------

You can find CassaStorm and the other books in this series at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Amazon Kindle and Goodreads.

-------------------

Also available:

.

Weekend Reflections -- Santa Ynez River

The Santa Ynez river in Santa Barbara County, California.
I left the thick stuff at the left in the photo to show you what we had to battle through to get to this reflection.

For reflections by other photographers go to Weekend Reflections by James.



.

Santa Ynez Mountains - Rancho Oso 1

My last couple of posts were from some mountains in San Diego County. Right after returning from that trip, we went on another.  This time to the Santa Ynez Mountains, inland from the Beautiful town of Santa Barbara.

This campground was located on a working horse ranch

Where there are horses, there must be tack

Where there is tack, there must be bunk houses (rental cabins actually). No, we didn't stay in one these things. We were roughing it in our RV.

One reason we wanted to come here was the hiking trails. Here is my granddaughter looking pretty chipper at the beginning of a hike.

As you can see, the trail started to deteriorate quickly. I wasn't concerned because there was supposed to be a great payoff at the end of this hike.

This isn't the payoff, but it was still a very nice waterfall.

I'm thinking there will be only one person who sees and will know right away what it is.  For those of you who don't know, this one was about 9 inches long.  Okay Bossy Betty, what is it?

The hike continues on the next post...

Okay, it's a banana slug!

.