San Benito County History Digest

Some residents fear development could destroy parts of the historic land.

The city-owned Luck Museum is in need of repair to protect its collection of artifacts and records from the elements.

Members of the board gathered to put forward a resolution that takes responsibility for the history of discrimination against Black San Franciscans.

San Benito County was founded Feb. 12, 1874, ending its 24 years as part of Monterey County. It was an inevitable chapter in a story that began in 1797. And that story is about land.

She toured the world wowing audiences, and she captured the public’s imagination for decades. No, not Taylor Swift; Ellen Beach Yaw, also known as Lark Ellen.

Anchoring San Juan Bautista’s Third Street, JJ’s Homemade Burgers is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Home of the “JJ’s Challenge,” it is a prime gathering spot in town.

Frank “Tito” Valenzuela, Hollister’s first Latino mayor, died Jan. 3 at age 91. He served on the Hollister City Council from 1964 to 1968 and was mayor in 1964 and 1965.

An extinct species of walrus was unearthed in Santa Cruz County, evoking a time when California was teeming with odd creatures that feel closer to fantasy than reality, researchers said.

James Dean’s last stop before he died in a car crash was at Blackwell’s Corner, a gas station in rural Kern County. His memory isn’t the draw it once was.

Lawmakers introduced a package of bills designed to tackle some forms of reparations. The measures may face budget constraints and opposition.

The California Legislative Black Caucus released a list of 14 bills as a first set of reparations for the descendants of African Americans who were enslaved.

Concerns over the history of Indigenous people, the need for diverse education courses, and representation in government were discussed at BenitoLink’s most recent Community Vision listening session.

Pea Soup Andersen’s, a Buellton, Calif., restaurant just shy of its 100th birthday, closed suddenly. The restaurant's other location, near Interstate 5 in Santa Nella, remains open.

BenitoLink’s coverage ranged from continued efforts to reveal who was the tenant of the 1 million fulfillment center on San Felipe Road to following Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital’s fiscal emergency.

Under new state laws, five cities will test cameras to catch speeding drivers and cruising bans will be lifted statewide. The first is supposed to improve road safety, but critics of the second say it will endanger the public.

State audits of the University of California and the California State University found both systems have failed to comply with decades-old state and federal laws mandating the return of Native ancestral remains and cultural artifacts. Only UCLA and Cal State Long Beach have returned a majority of their collections.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe announced it is acquiring about 10,000 acres of land in Northern California for $14.1 million. As part of this, the tribe will remove dams along the Klamath River and restore salmon runs.

Complications facing the architects of the new gas station to be built at the Alameda and Hwy 156 seems to be finally leading to approval by the San Juan Bautista Planning Commission.

Water fights have shaped California since its infancy as a state, when its abundance seemed limitless. Now, Californians are being forced to confront limitations, and the state that prides itself on creating the future is now reckoning with its past.

The Fort Independence Indian Community is getting the Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife at no cost in 2024. Native Americans had lived on this land for centuries before the hatchery’s construction.

Political wonks in California, Florida and maybe a few states in between, will be glued to their screens Thursday night to watch Gov. Gavin Newsom and Gov. Ron Desantis square off in a highly-anticipated Blue vs. Red State debate that’s been brewing since the summer.

Hundreds of people are expected at Alcatraz on Thanksgiving morning to commemorate Native Americans occupying the island from 1969-71. The event is known as the Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Gathering.

The longtime stage manager and associate of San Juan Bautista’s El Teatro Campesino was respected for his work in Teatro founder Luis Valdez’s landmark play “Zoot Suit,” as well as “La Pastorela” and “La Virgen de Tepeyac.”

A statue of Miwok elder William J. Franklin has been installed on California State Capitol grounds. The monument replaces a statue of Father Junípero Serra, which protestors toppled in 2020.

Tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone have been asking UC Berkeley for decades to give back ancestral remains from burial sites around the Bay Area. The school is in the process of repatriating 4,400 remains and 25,000 tribal items.

Robert Irwin, an artist and MacArthur genius grant recipient, died in San Diego at 95 on Oct. 25. Michael Govan, who heads the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, offers a colorful retrospective on Irwin's work.

Camille Dixon, the announcer for Disney California Adventure, and her husband, Bill Rogers, the voice of Disneyland, are moving on from this work. They have been at the parks for more than 40 years combined.

California wildfires every year emit as much carbon as almost 2 million cars, posing a threat to efforts to battle climate change.

In a new study published Aug. 17 in the journal Science, fossil records at La Brea Tar Pits indicate that the disappearance of California’s sabertooth cats, dire wolves and other large mammals nearly 13,000 years ago was linked to rising temperatures and fire activity spurred by people.

The first-in-the-nation measure to add caste to state anti-discrimination laws, which passed the state Senate, survives the Assembly judiciary committee. The bill’s author refused to water down the measure further.

An obscure 1910s-era labor board once regulated everything from canneries to film sets to sheep farms. Why is California trying to bring it back now?

Elwood Dryden was born on June 1, 1919. The well-known local businessman and former owner of the Sugar Plum Farm Restaurant said in an interview, “I remember when the county was only 3,000 people.”