Mural in Old Orcutt showing Orcutt Hill

          BIG BILL ORCUTT, always modest, was not thrilled to learn that a colleague had named a Union Oil town in his honor. The idea re­minded him "of the practice of naming cheap cigars after cheap actresses."

          The crossroads of town was the intersection of Broadway and Clark Avenue (named after E.W. Clark, general manager of the Pacific Coast Railway and, by most accounts, the man who gave Orcutt its name). On the southwest corner of that intersection, James F. Forbes built the first store in Orcutt. Part of it consisted of the old La Graciosa school which he had moved to the site.

          Fire was a constant danger, devouring most of the commercial structures built during Orcutt's initial period of development. In 1910 Forbes' store was destroyed by fire. "My dad was broke and he couldn't borrow enough money to rebuild," recalled Willard Forbes, born in Orcutt in 1904. "Then Charlie Webb and old Lou Drumm formed the Orcutt Mercantile Company."

          Webb and Drumm's new general merchandise store was an integral part of Orcutt life for almost five decades. Built on the spot where Forbes' first store had stood, the Mercantile was unlike any other structure in town. Built entirely of grayish corrugated tin when other buildings were made of wood, it was over two stories high - towering above other short, squat dwellings. Atop its rectangular front was a small peak embossed with the year of its creation, 1911.

         The Mercantile was an informal meeting spot and place to exchange news and gossip. It was within a couple of blocks of the busy railroad depot. It was also along the first county road - a road that was soon to become busy Route 2 (later part of old Highway l01) with its profitable parade of travelers. On Saturday nights, townspeople would congregate upstairs for dances on the hardwood floor.

          The Mercantile was at the center of a long transformation for Orcutt. Plotted by William Orcutt to accommodate only 50 lots, the townsite quickly blossomed with an assortment of odd, hastily built structures. By 1906 Orcutt was becoming a larger trading center than Santa Maria. It had two general stores, a furnishing store, a millinery shop, a vegetable and fruit market, a meat market, two restaurants, an ice cream parlor, a hotel, post office, shoe store, railway depot and several other shops and offices. And although Orcutt's charter prohibited the sale of alcohol, four saloons quickly opened just outside the town's limits to handle a hard-drinking and brawling population of oil men and cowboys, not to mention prostitutes.