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Jesusita Trail House
updated: Jun 28, 2012, 9:25 AM

By Edhat Subscriber

For the History section: When you hike the lower Jesusita trail, you pass what looks like the side of an old well. There must have been a home up there, yes?

Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 292387	2012-06-28 12:08 PM
That's where Jack Powers used to hide his loot.
COMMENT 292400	2012-06-28 01:01 PM
Tell us more about this loot. And is there anything left buried up there?
COMMENT 292414	2012-06-28 01:55 PM
@400... I don't think you'll get an honest answer to that! :-) I've gone up the trail with my metal detector to look for his loot - no luck. Do you think it's "finders keepers" for that kind of stuff?
HEATHER	2012-06-28 04:17 PM
What? Tell us more about Jack Powers!
COMMENT 292489	2012-06-28 04:33 PM
Check out the books by Walter Tompkins about Santa Barbara. He tells the story best about Jack Powers and his gang of outlaws who had their hide out in the San Roque Canyon. He's got other stories of buried treasure in Santa Barbara as well. I've kept my boys away from the video games (temporarily, LOL) with these stories. Great stuff!
FLICKA	2012-06-29 08:58 AM
You've heard the old saying, "don't believe everything you read,"; take Walker Tompkins with a grain of salt. He would get parts of a story and make up the rest. Pearl Chase would call him on an article and say she was there and it didn't happen the way he told it. His answer was that he was a journalist, not an historian.
COMMENT 292590	2012-06-29 09:34 AM
Every Santa Barbarian interested in the history of Santa Barbara should read Tompkins books. In the chapter on Powers he actually quotes a woman named Kate Den Bell who was born in 1844 on DP Ranch and was the "dowager queen of Santa Barbara's elite society until she died in 1926." According to the book she wrote in 1919, "To Santa Barbara came the handsome, magnetic daredevil Jack Powers, with his lawless 'Band of Five' - a mere handful, but our town surrendered without protest, and it's dark disgraceful days were begun....Powers and his band were in complete control of Santa Barbara and its leaders."
COMMENT 292636	2012-06-29 11:17 AM
The Wikipedia article on Jack Powers is informative. (Although much of the information there is taken from Tompkins, so if he was unreliable then it may be too.)
COMMENT 292654	2012-06-29 11:45 AM
I wouldn't say he's unreliable. He makes a point to state in his forwards that the stories are sometimes true, but sometimes also taken from folklore and legend. A lot of it can be corroborated through other sources but some is admittedly a stretch of the truth. Either way, I too find the old Santa Barbara stories very interesting and informative.
HEATHER	2012-06-29 10:18 PM
Thanks everyone. This has been fascinating....but back to the well and/or a house? Anyone know of history of a structure there?

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