1936 El Solano Yearbook

The 1936 Santa Paula High School El Solano Yearbook is now online! This edition of the El Solano was unusual in that it was spiral bound. This made the scanning of the pages easier, as the binding wasn't a concern, but many of the pages extended past the metal spiral and this made it difficult to scan the entire page. For the most part though, nothing significant was lost.

The pages were textured and this tended to cause some problems with the sharpness of the image scans. The images were "re-sharpened" digitally, but show some moiré patterns here and there due to the scanning and editing process. Oddly, many of the actual photographs were more blurry than in earlier yearbooks.

Containing very little prose (although there is an interesting bit of poetry on page 62 that appears to describe every member of the senior class), the yearbook contains mainly photographs. It is also interesting in that it shows some of the last pictures of the "second" Santa Paula High School building, a two story classical structure that was damaged during an earthquake in the early 1930's and torn down later that decade. Page 2 shows a couple of good photos of the building.

Although the yearbook was published a few years before World War II, there are signs of the developing conflict. One of the photos shows a student reading a textbook page on "The Spread of Dictatorship 1936" and the same page has a paragraph on "The Need for Patriotism" The yearbook also contains a number of blue "Art" pages which are in the Art Deco style of the period. The graphic on page 21 by Manual Victoria is particularly interesting in that it contains a dirigible flying above a stylized cityscape. The Hindenburg disaster occurred the next year and signaled the end of the huge lighter than air ships.

El Solano Yearbook: 1932

The Santa Paula High School 1932 El Solano Yearbook is online! The yearbook was published during the depression years, and is a small volume containing just over 40 pages of content. As Freeman M. Eakin (the same Eakin for which the Eakin auditorium is named) states in the Principal's message, "The 1932 EL SOLANO in particular is of necessity brief and to the point in its portrayal. The vainglorious boasting which characterizes most annuals has been eliminated and in its places there is a sane and sensible record". Another sign of the times was the formation of a Thrift Club, which makes an appearance in the yearbook.

The 1932 Senior class had just 68 members. The majority had individual photos in the yearbook, although a few just have their names listed. Juniors, Sophomores and Freshmen didn't have individual photos, but were represented by group photos on the steps of the old school building. The class pages took up about a third of the yearbook, with the remainder mainly composed of short articles about school clubs and athletics (softball replaced baseball this year!).

The layout of the online 1932 yearbook is close to the actual layout of the yearbook. The images are slightly touched up for clarity and much of the text was re-typed, instead of scanned, to make it easier to read. To avoid damaging the yearbook, the scanning was done on a very thin scanner perched on the edge of a table so the yearbook would not need to be opened beyond 90 degrees.

In addition to the 1932 El Solano, the 1903 El Solano has been reformatted. The original online version was completed a number of years ago, and although all the content of the yearbook is present, the layout isn't exactly the same as in the actual yearbook.