Question: When did Santa Barbara get its first sidewalks?

The 1870s were, in many ways, a key decade as Santa Barbara metamorphosed into an American city. English became the language of public record, tourism grew into an important industry, Stearns Wharf opened the city to the world, a streetcar system began, and gas lighting came to State Street, to name just a few milestones. Another development was the appearance of sidewalks along the city’s main thoroughfare, a process that sparked a controversy that would last some 20 years.

Negotiating State Street in the 1860s was not exactly for the faint of heart. During the dry season, horses, wagons, and buggies raised choke-inducing clouds of manure-laden dust. Still, most preferred this to conditions in the winter when rains could turn State Street into a virtually impassable quagmire. Add to this the lack of gutters and the tendency of some to use the street as their own personal garbage dump and the result was an unsavory, unhealthful mess. Complaints were raised about the stench from the carcasses of horses and other animals left in the street to rot. As the population grew, traffic congestion became a growing concern. All these conditions were hardly conducive to pedestrian safety or comfort and were certainly counterproductive in a city increasingly attuned to attracting new settlers and tourists.

By the early 1870s, there was growing public clamor to grace State Street with some sort of sidewalk. Up to that time, installation of walkways was a comparatively hit-or-miss affair, with business owners taking it upon themselves to construct a short length of sidewalk in front of their own establishments. One newspaper, in calling for improvements, resorted to sarcasm in an attempt to get the ball rolling: