Santa Barbara Genealogical Society’s
Earthquake Exhibit Centers People
Stories and Lives Remembered Exhibit
Introduces Us to Earthquake Survivors and Victims
By Christina McDermott | June 12, 2025
Read more of our Earthquake Centennial Cover Story.
As a fairly recent Santa Barbara resident, I’ve always considered the 1925 earthquake by what it changed rather than by who it changed. But the ongoing exhibit, tucked into the Sahyun Library at the S.B. County Genealogical Society on Castillo Street, made the earthquake not a distant plot event, but something that shaped lives. Called Stories and Lives Remembered, the exhibit focuses on people, and that’s what makes it interesting.
“With genealogy, we’re really big on family history and those stories,” said the society’s outreach coordinator Holly Snyder, who explained that the idea started out for members of the society, before growing to include community stories. “You can really kind of step in their footsteps, their shoes.”
Part of the exhibit includes accounts from people about the earthquake, as well as short biographies of their lives and photos of them. In one shot, you can see a woman sitting neatly in the rubble of a destroyed building.
“I’ve always heard about families hanging outside because they didn’t want to be inside with all these aftershocks,” Snyder said. “There’s actually pictures here that show them, you know, just hanging out outside, setting up a little kitchen out there.”
The other part of the exhibit, created by historian and author Neal Graffy, remembers the earthquake’s victims. Graffy writes how he was able to verify 11 deaths — three of the dead were considered “well known.”
“The standard comment about the earthquake was how fortunate we were that so few people died. True enough, but I always wondered who these other people were,” Graffy writes. “Did they have families? Friends? Did their passing go unnoticed?”
Stories of some of the victims lined the wall. Graffy crafted histories with the details he had gleaned. Many were immigrants. Many worked labor jobs. All of them felt like real people that you could meet waiting for a bus or in line at the store.
Stories and Lives Remembered is open now through August 16 at the S.B. County Genealogical Society (316 Castillo St.). It’s free to the public, available to see during the Sahyun Library’s regular hours.
Exhibits to Eye
The S.B. Genealogical Society’s Stories and Lives Remembered exhibit is at the Sahyun Library
until June 29 during the library’s opening hours.
Other EQ25 exhibits include:
S.B. Historical Museum’s 1925 Earthquake exhibit, until July 6
GIMME SHELTER by Marcia Rickard, at the Art Gallery of the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara,
until August 9
S.B. Public Library’s lobby display, until June 30
Edson Smith Photo Collection, at the East Faulkner Gallery in the S.B. Public Library, until June 30
Huguette Remembers the Earthquake, at Bellosguardo, until July 1
Santa Barbara 1925-2025: A Portrait in Maps at Casa de la Guerra, opens mid-September
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