Historic SLO County jail once housed ‘robbers, thieves and vagrants.’ Now it’s coming home

A historic San Luis Obispo County jail will soon return home following the purchase of a long-vacant downtown property.

On Sept. 15, after more than five years of negotiations, the Cambria Historical Society paid the Cambria Community Services District $5,000 for the lot at 2884 Center St., finalizing a deal the CSD board unanimously approved nearly a month earlier.

The Cambria Historical Society plans to grade the land, replace a fence and create a secure foundation for the circa-1888 jail.

Then the group will relocate the one-room jailhouse from its current spot on Main Street near the Cambria Veterans Memorial Building, to Center Street at or near its original location.

Directors of the Lions Club of Cambria confirmed in September that the group will donate the one-room jailhouse to the historical society.

Efforts to purchase the lot, located at the creek end of Bridge Street in Cambria’s East Village, were led through the years former historical society board president John Ehlers, current president Melody Coe and board member Consuelo Macedo, among others.

According to CSD counsel Tim Carmel, the sale of the land took so long to finalize because the district had to comply with new amendments to the state Surplus Property Land Act, which “requires public agencies with surplus land to make the property available for affordable housing projects before selling it for other purposes.”

Use of the property is limited by the deed, the attorney said. The restriction is “to assure that it is only used as an historic facility that is open to the public, as the location for the Cambria Jail and as part of the Cambria Historical District.”

Property is ‘significant part’ of SLO history

In the late 1880s, the Center Street lot where the jailhouse will be relocated was on “the Butterfield Stage Route into town,” Macedo said. “So it’s a significant part of Cambria’s Victorian-era history.”

In August 1879, according to the late historian Paul Squibb, Cambria residents were “raising a fund to build a calaboose” and had secured $55 toward that goal.

“The balance of $45 left from our Fourth of July fund will be contributed to aid in building the prison,” Squibb wrote in a 1999 report on the jail that quoted Squibb’s historical document.

“Such jail as the earlier Slabtown of the 1860s… probably lacked the deluxe features of the present relic,” Squibb wrote.

All that remains inside the 1888-era jail now, Coe wrote via text, “is a bench on either side and a charred interior that retains the stench of a former fire.”

Inmates housed there included “robbers, thieves and vagrants,” Coe said.

Where will jailhouse be located?

The 110-foot-deep lot, which has 60 feet of frontage on Center Street, is bounded by the intersection of Center and Bridge Street, the U.S. Postal Service building, the Forrest Warren property, the Greenspace Creekside Preserve and Santa Rosa Creek.

The society’s newest land acquisition had been the home of the services district’s offices until 1995, when a large drainage culvert under the building collapsed during heavy storm flooding.

The district cleared off the lot in 2004 and 2005.

In 2008, San Luis Obispo County and the Cambria CSD installed a new $17,000 high-density polyethylene culvert below the surface of the land.

County planners didn’t want another structure built on the still fragile lot of fill dirt that’s on a flood plain. Through the decades the creek has carved off a substantial chunk of the property.

The property was intended to serve as a Center Street pocket park with a picnic table and benches.

In recent years, however, unhoused people have set up campsites there.

Although the CSD couldn’t legally require campers and other trespassers to move elsewhere, the historical society can.

For weeks, Coe, society member Dick Clark and deputies from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office’s Community Action Team warned the homeless people camping illegally on the land that they’d have to leave the property. Coe and Clark even provided about 50 big plastic bags for the campers’ belongings and trash.

All had left by Sept. 28, Coe said.

If trespassers show up there again, she said, a sheriff’s deputy can require them to leave.

“Besides bringing the jail home,” Coe said, “The Cambria Historical Society wanted to again provide the community with a lovely park by the creek, someplace where they can enjoy their lunch, sit and chat or just reflect on the town’s beauty and deep history.”

Historical district planned for Cambria’s East Village

Nearly 30 years ago, the CSD’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Commission outlined a plan for a historical district along Center Street.

The jailhouse’s new home is in the southernmost cornerstone of that district, which features other structures from the late 1800s.

Those include the Cambria Historical Museum, located in the Victorian-era Guthrie-Bianchini House, and its adjacent Nancy Moure Historical Resource Center, which was built as a doctor’s office and home in 1878.

The Greenspace Creekside Reserve and its Chinese Temple are across the street, as is the Warren property, where structures were destroyed by fire in 1997.

Macedo said the historical society will restore the aging jailhouse, making it more stable and attractive — although it will available for viewing from the outside only.

“It will provide a great photo op,” she said.