Lompoc Valley Historical Society

10/13/2026

Lompoc Review 11/10/1925 - Richard Schuyler

10/11/2026

June 19, 1909 - The Lompoc Journal - Richard Schuyler

10/01/2026

Here is the original. Like many old photos it is damaged.

09/30/2026

ChatGPT really cleaned up this photo of the Fabing-McKay-Spanne house. Probably @1900.

09/29/2026

09/26/2026

On March 23, 1962, President John F. Kennedy made a historic visit to Vandenberg Air Force Base (AFB) in California.. It marked a major Cold War milestone: the first time a sitting U.S. president witnessed a live strategic missile launch.

The Atlas Launch: JFK watched the live launch of an unarmed Atlas 134D intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), operated by airmen from F.E. Warren's 389th Strategic Missile Wing (including Launch Crew R-07). The successful liftoff served as a high-stakes public and internal demonstration of U.S. nuclear deterrent reliability.

Kennedy was accompanied by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Strategic Air Command Commander-in-Chief General Thomas S. Power, Defense Research/Development official Dr. Harold Brown, and roughly 50 members of the White House press corps.

Beyond the Atlas pad, Kennedy toured underground launch and silo infrastructure, inspected Titan missile complexes, and viewed Minuteman missile launch facilities and space/missile hardware displays.

Coming months before the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), the visit underscored the administration's tight focus on massive retaliation capabilities, operational readiness, and personal presidential trust in the burgeoning ICBM arsenal. A failed launch broadcasted to the press pool would have signaled weakness to Moscow, making the smooth ex*****on a critical psychological and strategic win.

I remember this day as we watched AF1 fly over Lompoc. I was in school at Hapgood. - Richard Schuyler

09/22/2026

This is the other part of the photo posted yesterday. Pre-1911. Shows I street and the first Catholic wood frame church. Tiny piece of H street in lower right corner.

09/21/2026

Very early photo looking North. H street on the left. Elementary school in the far distance.

09/18/2026

Free at Stone Pine Hall, next to the Museum.
Aloha Beach was an actual development by Surf in the late 1920’s.

09/12/2026

Pt. Arguello 1931

She survived wartime service and died on a routine coastal run

The Harvard was one of the White Flyers of the Pacific, a 403 foot turbine steamer launched at Chester, Pennsylvania in January 1907, good for over 22 knots and famous with her sister Yale for the overnight run between San Francisco and Los Angeles. She had a war behind her too, commandeered by the US Navy in 1918 and put to work carrying troops across the English Channel from Southampton to Le Havre and Boulogne before returning to the California coast in 1921.

Early on the morning of 30 May 1931 she was running her usual schedule with around 500 passengers aboard when she went hard aground in dense fog four miles north of Point Arguello, on the stretch of coast known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. The cause was put down to a navigation error. The sea was calm, there was no panic, her lifeboats were lowered and stood by until a passing freighter arrived, and the passengers were eventually transferred to the cruiser USS Louisville. Nobody died. The ship could not be refloated and broke up where she lay, her forward third already gone by the time an aerial photograph was taken two weeks later.