massive crowd. In the following months, The Morning Press regularly reported on Cerca del Mar luncheons, dinner parties, teas and bridge club meetings attended by the who’s who of Carpinteria families, such as the Catlins, Thurmonds, Bailards, Shepards and Treloars. Then, on the morning of Dec. 26, Coyle, president


of Cerca del Mar Club, was found dead in his bed, the victim of what was believed to be heart failure. With Coyle’s ambitions in the morgue, the certain success of Cerca del Mar began to fade. In January 1929, the Carpinteria Herald reported


that two Los Angeles gentlemen purchased the property with the intention of carrying forth Coyle’s expansion plans. Just nine months later, however, the newspaper reported that the property was be- ing leased for oil drilling, and “our oceanfront may


become a full fledged oilfield ...” Interested in obtaining the property to create a pub-


lic park, Santa Barbara County first confronted a tangle of local and out-of-town investors seeking their share of the property value. Unraveling the knot of owner- ship dragged on for months; meanwhile the regal clubhouse sat shuttered as of December, 1929. Optimism returned when, in May 1930, the title cleared and the county purchased the property. “Un- der the supervision of the county park board it can be made one of the big attractions of the county,” trum- peted the Herald. But with the country sliding deeper into the Great


Depression, the grand resurrection of Cerca del Mar proved to be a pipe dream. In 1932, the State Parks purchased the property with plans to build a camp-


76 CarpinteriamagaZINe


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