of Mussel Shoals in 1924 on land owned by the Hickey Brothers. Ten years later he also developed Solimar Beach on leased land. 1927–1959 On March 11, 1931, famed German film director F.W. Murnau suffered a severe head injury in a single-car accident on the highway near Rincon Beach. He was taken to a hospital in Santa Barbara where he died the next day. Successful oil drilling off of Mussel Rock began in 1927. Oil workers leased rental property in La Conchita. A mild interest in beach property began to grow in the early 1930s. However, despite oil fields producing in Sea Cliff and elsewhere on the Rincon, no oil was discovered in La Conchita. The fresh water promised to all lots never materialized either. For many years La Conchita remained a small and quiet community. Many people who had purchased property here initially built summer homes right on the beach, drawn to the serenity and the unspoiled beauty of the beach, ocean and the view. The La Conchita Story project used oral histories and memories of a residents of the community from 1928 on. Eleanor Gallardo Ramey was born in La Conchita in 1928 in the house built by her father Joseph Gallardo a year earlier. The Gallardo homestead still stands on Sunland Avenue, which was then known as Ventura Avenue. Joseph Gallardo, a native of Mexico, worked for the railroad as a watchman and Eleanor has vivid memories, as well as photographs, of all the years she attended the Punta Gorda (one room) Schoolhouse in La Conchita. Pete Richardson came to La Conchita in 1928 when he was two years old. His father Harry Richardson was an oil worker who dug the first oil well in Mussel Shoals (then known as Mussel Rock). At that time, Richardson remembers his family as having the only "real house in La Conchita", an adobe, whose foundation can still be found just south of town. Dick Talaugon's father Federico Talaugon leased a large house from the Gaynor family on the site of the current Phillips oil storage facility. The family moved there in the winter of 1932 and were part of a growing Pacific Islander community working the farms and ranches of the major landowners of the region. Here Talaugon farmed lima beans and barley. Both Pete Richardson and Dick Talaugon attended Punta Gorda School, the one-room schoolhouse in La Conchita. The