About the Aliso School Mural
The Aliso School Mural: Past, Present and Future Experiences in Carpinteria
The mural is based on a traditional “arbol de vida”, a tree of life candelabra. It is painted ceramic folk art produced throughout Mexico. This traditional art form typically features scenes from people’s lives interspersed with birds, animals, and flowers. It depicts the spectrum of human life.
At the base of the mural, there are three women’s faces. The one on the left looks to the past, the one in the middle facing forward represents the present, and the one on the right looks to the future. The candle burning on the left is almost spent, the one in the middle burns brightly, and the one on the right has just been lit.
The Aliso School mural is the creation of artist MaryBeth (M. B.) Hanrahan, commissioned by the Carpinteria Cultural Foundation, and approved for use by the Carpinteria Unified School District’s Board of Trustees.
The key images in the Tree of Life tell an abbreviated story of Carpinteria’s history in a roughly chronological order, top to bottom and left to right, as follows:
The young men pictured at the top left of the mural enlisted patriotically into the various military branches of the United States to serve their country in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II (WWII). From left to right, the men are Jess Ortiz, Lorenzo Martinez and Salvador Campos, all former Aliso School students. Mr. Ortiz was the highest decorated man in fighting action out of Carpinteria. WWII had great significance for the integration of the Mexican community in Carpinteria. The returning servicemen largely left the agricultural fields of Carpinteria and established their own businesses and turned to civic organizations, for example, the American G. I. Forum.
The C. D. Hubbard Fruit Company was established in Carpinteria in 1912. Hubbard was originally from the San Fernando Valley and was a founding member of the California Fruit Growers Exchange (now Sunkist). Moving to Carpinteria, he quickly established Carpinteria as a major lemon producing industrial area. The C. D. Hubbard Fruit Company packinghouse was on Palm Avenue and featured a smiling lemon caricature on many of its brand labels. The large sliding entryway door to the packinghouse also featured the smiling lemon. Circa 1935, the same year that Aliso School was moved to its current location, the Hubbard Fruit Company name was changed to the Carpinteria Lemon Association (the CLA).
The Camino Real Bell is posted throughout California signifying the “Royal Road” of the King of Spain. The Spanish military starting in 1542 explored the coastal landscape on several occasions mapping and naming the various places they encountered. On the Diego de Portola expedition of 1769, Fray Juan Crespi named the Carpinteria Valley San Roque. However, Portola’s soldiers observed the indigenous people, the Chumash, building wooden canoes and called the valley “La Carpinteria”. The name stuck. Carpinteria is the Spanish word for a carpenter’s shop. The Carpinteria beach in this image has a view of the Channel Islands and a dolphin swimming in the ocean.
The Southern Pacific Railroad reached Carpinteria in 1887 and established a train depot at the bottom of Linden Avenue by the beach. This event moved the town center of Carpinteria to Linden Avenue from the Santa Monica Creek area. With the passing of time the area between Santa Monica Avenue and Cravens Lane became known as “Old Town”. The building of the depot spurred a modernization movement that established a street grid that was done in a perpendicular fashion that defined the city limits of Carpinteria. Streets that ran in a north to south direction were named after trees. Streets that ran east to west were numbered. With Linden Avenue as the town center, commercial buildings, churches, and the Aliso School soon arose. There was even a Chinatown. The railroad tracks were largely laid by Chinese laborers. Before Aliso School was established, Carpinteria schools – Santa Monica, Rincon, and Ocean View – existed around the perimeter of the Carpinteria Valley about three miles apart from each other.
The Henry Fish Seed Company was established on Palm Avenue prior to 1900. The seed company largely introduced the world to the lima bean, a bean imported from Lima, Peru to Carpinteria. Several lima bean variants were created by the Henry Fish Seed Company. Its main packinghouse was converted into the C. D. Hubbard Fruit Company’s packinghouse in 1912. Another of the Henry Fish packinghouses still stands to this day near the entryway of the Carpinteria State Park. The packinghouse has been converted into studios for a colony of Carpinteria artists.
Aliso School was established in 1892 on Walnut Avenue. Today it is the spot where the Veteran’s Memorial Building sits next to the Carpinteria Public Library and the Carpinteria Valley Museum of History. In 1912, another new school, Carpinteria Union, was built at the top of Palm Avenue. In 1920, Aliso School was converted into a school for Mexican children to accommodate the Mexican fieldworkers who were needed to tend to the booming lemon industry. In 1935, the school was razed and rebuilt at its present location at the point where 7th Street intersects with Carpinteria Avenue. The two men pictured are Joe Morales, the first Mexican American to sit on the School Board of Education. To his right is Del Kent who was a school board member during the time of Carpinteria’s segregated schools. When the schools integrated in 1947, Mr. Kent formed a strong bond with Mr. Morales on the Carpinteria School Board.
Juan Cabrillo’s ship approached the village of Mishopshno in 1542. The indigenous people of Carpinteria were the Chumash who lived in various villages throughout the Carpinteria Valley. They lived off the land as hunter-gatherers. They were exceptional fishermen and caulked their boats, called tomols, with tar from the Carpinteria tarpits.
The Mexican piñata is a common party feature for all Carpinteria denizens.
Women are depicted making homemade tortillas for homemade family meals. The first Mexican Restaurant in Carpinteria, Delgado’s, debuted in the 1960s. Before becoming one of the iconic eateries of Carpinteria, it started as a tortilla factory in the 1950s. Delgado’s tortillas were packaged and sold regionally. Delgado’s is located in Old Town, Carpinteria, near the Aliso School.
The “Sun/Moon” symbols.
The sport of surfing became popular circa the 1940s in Carpinteria, particularly at the Rincon County line that separates Ventura from Santa Barbara. The sport took a huge leap in popularity in the 1960s spawning fanzines globally, and surfboard shops in the Carpinteria Valley. One of the best known Carpinteria surfers was Kevin Sears, a former Aliso School student. He is imagined here with his golden curls bobbing as he catches a wave.
Día de los Muertos celebrations in Carpinteria became an annual tradition with the advent of elementary school teacher René Mireles into the Carpinteria Unified School District. The celebration captured the imagination of the community and initially was limited to the Main Elementary School (i.e., Carpinteria Union) as its staging area. With the closure of Main School as an elementary school, Mr. Mireles moved over to the Aliso Elementary School for the 2008 – ’09 school year. By this time, Dia de los Muertos events in Carpinteria had begun to proliferate throughout the community with sponsoring groups competing on the community calendar. Reynaldo’s Bakery on Linden Avenue had made the traditional sugar skulls for decades prior to Mr. Mireles’s arrival in Carpinteria and has provided Dia de los Muertos treats and supplies for the events staged to this day. The local group Artesanía para la Familia sponsors its event annually at the Carpinteria Cemetery located at what was once the heart of Old Town on Cravens Lane and near Santa Monica Avenue.
The past, present, and future of the Carpinteria community are represented by the women looking in different directions at the bottom of the Tree of Life. They are represented by the women Josefina “Josie” Manriquez de Villegas on the left looking back at the historical past; Jenny Gonzales de Saragosa looking directly into the present; and Betty Bautista looking forward into the future. Each of these women made significant contributions in creating the Carpinteria culture that the community enjoys to this day. Ms. Bautista pioneered a preschool program for the Carpinteria Unified School District that would have been unimaginable during the era of Carpinteria’s segregated schools. Applying the theories of renowned linguist Dr. Jim Cummins, she used her students’ home language as a bridge to the learning of English. Her methodology was examined and lauded by Dr. Cummins, himself, in the Harvard Educational Review (April, 1986), and became required reading in schools of education throughout the United States. Cummins’ “The Interlanguage Development Theory” is now accepted as an axiom in scientific inquiry.
Symbols of justice, public service and civic engagement are represented in this scene. Jessica Barber, one of the Carpinteria Unified School District’s most accomplished students (Class of ’96), and a student of Ms. Bautista’s preschool program, speaks at the podium.
Peace on Earth. The dove with an olive branch is a universal symbol.
The handshake of friendship and the promotion of unity in the community is another universal symbol.
Greenhouses for Carpinteria’s flower industry became an important part of the community’s landscape in the 1960s. They proliferate on the roads of the Carpinteria foothills and along the west side of Via Real where the original Old Town of Carpinteria was established way back in the 19th century. The flower industry became an important part of the economy thanks to businesspeople of many ethnicities including Japanese Americans and a wave of immigrants from Holland in Europe. For the Japanese, it was a comeback in Carpinteria. With the exception of the Ota family, the Japanese had been erased from Carpinteria due to their internment by the United States government after the bombing by the Japanese government of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941.
The Rainbow Heart symbolizes tolerance and diversity.
The energy of the future is symbolized by the Wind turbines and Solar Energy depicted here.
Carpinteria has always provided a wide variety of physical activity for its citizens: Beaches that are accessible to everyone at no cost, parks for picnics and recreation, and hiking trails at the bluffs and in the foothills. At the time of the creation of the Aliso Mural, the City of Carpinteria opened a skateboarding park, and safe bike paths from the bluffs to Santa Claus Lane.
Carpinteria is currently experiencing a variety of new restaurants that employ “farm to table” cooking methods and fusion cuisine.
The homes and house keys pictured here symbolize the trend started after World War II of turning Carpinteria into a bedroom community of family values for all, home ownership and safe schools. The lemon fields were razed in favor of housing developments and new schools. Also, a new “King” of agriculture was crowned, the avocado! In today’s economic environment, home ownership for younger adults is more difficult than before, but Carpinteria retains its small-town feel and charm.
The Aliso Mural was aided by a donation from Tim and Ginny Bliss. The mural is in the memory of Lucio Medel and George Bliss Jr., two men who grew up together on agricultural ranches, bringing and keeping the community together, best friends. Throughout their lives, Lucio and George Jr. demonstrated the power of relationships to overcome prejudice and segregation.
Aliso Mural Athletes Vignette
Aliso School produced many athletes who went on to have stellar careers at Carpinteria High School. Many Carpinterians would likely select Peter Franco as the first of those stars. Franco set records in track & field shining brightly during the mid-1930s at Carpinteria’s premiere sporting event of the era, the Russell Cup Track Meet. Franco, tragically, was killed only a few years later aboard the USS Sea Wolf, a highly decorated submarine during World War II. His death highlighted the sacrifice Carpinteria’s youth were willing to make for their country. Dan Velasquez and Joe Diaz were two of the many Aliso students who brought glory on the gridiron to Carpinteria High participating during a run of 11 straight Tri-Valley League (TVL) championship seasons starting in the late 1940s and throughout the ‘50s. Velasquez was awarded the TVL Player-of-the-Year in football by the Los Angeles Examiner in 1956 and ’57. Diaz was the Examiner’s TVL Player-of-the-Year in 1955, for baseball.