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Were they scared that their island home was going to split in half and sink into the ocean? Who could blame them, given the dramatic results of the
December 21 earthquake of that year, pegged at 7.1 magnitude on the Richter scale? Archival records at Old Mission Santa Barbara refer to a large tsunami
at the island, but the terrestrial changes were so terrific as to defy the imagination. Phil C. Orr, who served over thirty years as Curator of Anthropology and
Paleontology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, wrote of the 1812 earthquake’s effect on the north coast of Santa Rosa Island: “A large crack,
1,000 yards long, more than 100 feet wide, and 50 or 60 feet deep opened up in Cañada Lobo.”
Santa Rosa Island was still unoccupied when México achieved its independence from Spain in 1821. Apparently it stayed that way until 1843, when Alta
California’s governor, Manuel Micheltorena, granted the island to the socially prominent brothers Don Carlos Carrillo and Don José Carrillo. Within a month
they ceded the island to the two daughters of Carlos, who both had married American businessmen. The two men, John C. Jones and Alpheus B. Thompson,
established sheep ranching on the island. Reportedly starting out with 75 sheep, by 1852 the animals had multiplied into a flock of ten thousand. In 1856,
Jones and Thompson’s formerly amicable relationship came to an end, and over the next three years they engaged in a legal tussle over their livestock. The
lawsuits resulted in the sale of Santa Rosa Island to another pair of brothers, T. Wallace More and Alexander P. More.
The More family’s era on Santa Rosa Island lasted from 1859 to 1901, during which time they continued the sheep ranching operations and increased the
flock to approximately 45,000 animals. But by the mid-1870s, the post-Civil War wool market was in vast decline; the weak market coincided with a major
drought and the resulting scarcity of grass. The dire situation necessitated the reduction of the flock by more than half, as noted in an 1876 newspaper account
that stated, “The slaughter of sheep for their pelts and tallow on Santa Rosa Island, is still going on and will continue for some time. 25,000 sheep are to be
killed which will leave from 15,000 to 20,000 on the island.” The slaughtered animals were boiled in tall kettles that could hold several hundred carcasses at a
time, which still stand like rusted towers next to the barn built by the Mores.
Landmarks