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Clerk of the Board Archives
The Board of Supervisors Historical Minutes archive is now online
Minutes from 1850 - Present are now available to view
From November 18, 1850 (the first day of the county's recorded history) to August 5, 1907, the Clerk of the Board handwrote the legislative history of the County in 16 hard-bound ledgers. From September 3, 1907 to April 4, 1977, the minutes were documented with a typewriter, spanning over 150 similar hard-bound books. After 1977, the Board of Supervisors' minute books were archived to microfilm/microfiche, and beginning in 2000 the minutes have been published online.
This project is the result of a collaboration between the County and the UCSB Special Collections Library. The minute books offer a fascinating look at our 165 year history as a County. Each book is typically 300-600 pages long, and provides a fascinating look into the early days of Santa Barbara County and California as a whole.
Making the records more accessible to the public...is crucial. Not to mention, the stories are great.
— Doreen Farr, Former 3rd District Supervisor
I'm excited about making this record available online and I'm hopeful that others will find the passages as interesting as I have. I believe it's important to take the time to look back at how we started in order to understand who we are today.
— Mike Allen, Clerk of the Board
The archives are organized into four sections, based on the year and how they were recorded:
1850 - 1907
Method: Handwritten
16 Books, 7,290 pages
The Handwritten Era, 1850 - 1907
Use the links below to begin viewing of any of the original 16 handwritten books from 1850 - 1907. You may also download a complete PDF of each, although keep in mind the file sizes of these are very large, 200 MB or greater.