For nearly 90 years, the members of the Ahlman family have made this cottage on the corner of Cliff Drive and Flora Vista Drive their home. Sven Gustaf Ahlman built the home in 1937. He was an immigrant from Sweden who started a grocery business here with his brother in the early 1920s. The home’s builder, also a Swedish immigrant, was Carl G. Erickson. (Another Swedish immigrant who lived on the Mesa was the famous artist Carl Oscar Borg. It’s quite possible that they all knew each other.)
The Ahlman brothers’ grocery was located at the corner of Milpas and Haley streets. The brick building is no longer a grocery, but it still stands, and it was only slightly damaged in the catastrophic earthquake of 1925. Several years after the quake, the brothers sold their business to the Piggly Wiggly Company. Piggly Wiggly came along as the grocery business was changing. In the old days, grocery clerks stood behind the counter and customers requested the items they wished to purchase. But the grocery world changed, and Piggly Wiggly allowed customers to roam the store and choose their own items.
Changes on the Mesa
Much of the oil production in this area of the Mesa had faded during the 1930s, so people like the Ahlmans seeking home sites began to move into the area. Development on the Mesa was beginning to grow as the city of Santa Barbara spread outward. When the family built their home, Flora Vista Drive was only one block long. It wasn’t until the 1960s that Flora Vista extended up the hill and connected with Calle Canon.
Another change that probably attracted settlement in this area of the Mesa was the ending of the utopian community called the Fellowship Society. It might have been that such an offbeat group of folks discouraged other people from settling in the area. The group’s philosophy sounded a bit like a 1960s hippie commune. “This colony is co-operative, with common gardens and orchards in which all are to share. It is to be a gathering, so far as possible, of New Thought Folks, or those who are taking the watchword of the New Age, ‘Love and Service.’ The grounds are to be laid out artistically and lots subdivided by a very fine landscape artist, and all houses, whatever they may cost, are to conform artistically to The Whole” (NOW magazine, January 1920).
[Click to zoom] 2342 Cliff Drive | Credit: Betsy J. Green
However, the idea of utopia ended abruptly with the drilling of oil wells on the Mesa, and the share-and-share alike philosophy no longer had the same appeal. The local paper wrote, “The quest of gold brought about the downfall of the colony. The land adjoins that from which millions are hoped to be realized by oil promoters and shortly before the first well was spudded in, the members of the colony decided that the purpose of the organization had not been attained and asked for dissolution” (Santa Barbara Morning Press, August 8, 1924).
The Ahlman home is nestled in a leafy green area, and two monarch butterflies romped around as I was taking photos. There have been many family gatherings here over the decades. John Ahlman, the grandson of Sven Gustaf Ahlman, told me that his grandfather and friends loved to play the mandolin, and it’s easy to imagine the family snuggled in the cottage listening to familiar tunes.
Please do not disturb the residents of this home.
Betsy J. Green is a Santa Barbara historian, and author of Discovering the History of Your House and Your Neighborhood, Santa Monica Press, 2002. Her website is betsyjgreen.com.
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