Santa Marguerita Sites

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) made improvements to Santa Marguerita Elementary School – then part of the Park Hill School District and now in the Atascadero Unified School District.  Only traces of the WPA work remain at the site. The work included repairing brick chimneys, moving a garage, and repairing school desks. The main improvements were to the site:  build a concrete retaining wall & backfill, level the ground around 'the teacherage' (school building?), and grade and level the playground, as well as build and repair play equipment. WPA project cards in the National Archives show that this work was originally approved...

In 1940-41, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built several stone-lined culverts for drainage on California state highway 58 – also known as Calf Canyon Road – east of the intersection with route 229, roughly 5-10 miles east of Santa Marguerita CA. These are unusually elegant drainage works, since most culverts do not have rock walls above ground and WPA stamps in the stones.  They were effectively small bridges over gullies, where previously the road dipped and could be flooded in winter. These culverts were part of a program of WPA road work all over San Luis Obispo County during the 1930s,...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the Trout Creek bridge on state highway 58, a couple miles east of Santa Marguerita, in 1941.  This was part of a program of WPA road work all over San Luis Obispo County roads during the 1930s, as indicated by WPA "project cards" in the National Archives. WPA project cards are only indicative, however; they show which projects were planned, funded by the WPA and approved by President Franklin Roosevelt; they do not guarantee that the work was actually done, since the WPA usually proposed more projects than it could carry out.  In this case, the...