Ed Borein's Home (part 1)
La Barranca is just a street name in the Mesa neighborhood of Santa Barbara now, but for almost 50 years, it was the Southwestern-style home of the famous cowboy artist Ed Borein (1872 – 1945), one of the early Mesa artists.
Born in San Leandro, California, Borein worked as a cowboy in California and Mexico in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the last decades of the Old West. At night, he would sit in the bunkhouse and sketch what he had seen during the day. In 1900, the "San Francisco Call" newspaper began purchasing some of his sketches and stories, and eventually Borein decided to hang up his boots and spurs and take up a sketch pad and pencil instead.
He studied in New York for a while and then moved back West in 1921 and settled in Santa Barbara. He had a studio/shop on the Street in Spain on East De la Guerra Street next to the Casa de la Guerra adobe. In 1923, he and his wife Lucille built their dream home on the edge of the cliff on the Mesa. The building permit for the home showed an estimated cost of $3,000. A small canyon or barranca ran through the property, so they baptized their home "La Barranca."
(More about the home next week.)