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Memorial Day Walking Tour of the Santa Barbara Cemetery
May 26 @ 1:00 pm PDT
Historic Walking Tour of the Santa Barbara Cemetery with Historian, David Petry, author of The Best Last Place: a History of the Santa Barbara Cemetery.
Date:
Sunday, May 26, 2024 from 1 PM to 3:30 PM
Meet at the Cemetery Chapel, 901 Channel Drive.
$25 per person. Pay at the door. Cash or check.
Please register at dlpetry@gmail.com or 805 689 3423.
Or pay at www.thegreatgetgone.com.
The Santa Barbara Cemetery is unique among cemeteries. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the cemetery is home to actors, industrialists, authors, musicians, sports stars, and many of the town’s founders and leaders. The cemetery has also transcended through five separate incarnations: as a dusty, geometric town cemetery, as a rudely conceived rural cemetery, as a fitful lawn park cemetery, as an over-achieving memorial park, and as a local columbarium. The Santa Barbara Cemetery has embraced each of these phases and has built upon them, becoming in the end, a modern cemetery that is better than any of the models it followed.
Over a decade has passed since Mr. Petry’s last public tour at the cemetery. The tour provides a history of the cemetery and a 1-mile walking tour to the most interesting gravesites and sections of the cemetery. See the burial sites of town leaders Charles Fernald and Thomas More Storke, actors Ronald Colman, Laurence Harvey, and his daughter Domino, murderer Cyrus Barnard, gold magnate Augustus Sahlberg, business founders Jheri Redding, Sam Battistone, David Nancarrow, and George Oscar Mayer. Among many others.
Logistics
The tour takes 2 ½ to 3 hours.
Wear comfortable walking shoes.
Bring sunglasses, hats, sunscreen, and water.
Bathrooms at the Chapel (start & end of tour).
Photography is permitted.
If attendees are interested in purchasing a copy of Mr. Petry’s hard-bound, full-color history of the cemetery, The Best Last Place, the book is discounted to $25 (retail $30). Cash or check.
