New Museum Lands on Tiny, Isolated Santa Barbara Island : National park: Exhibits focus on local flora and fauna, as well as on the only family to ever live there permanently.

One of the smallest--and destined to be among the least-visited--museums in California and perhaps anywhere in America has opened on a wind-swept, treeless, one-square-mile island 47 miles southwest of Ventura.

Fewer than 500 boaters and passengers a year go ashore on remote Santa Barbara Island, one of five that make up Channel Islands National Park.

But now, those who make the trip will find the $40,000 Santa Barbara Island Museum, dedicated Oct. 23.

The museum features a huge canvas mural by artist John Iwerks, showing California sea lions and fish swimming in kelp along the island coast. Dioramas depict the geology, flora and fauna of the island, including a re-creation of nesting birds known as Xantus’ murrelets.

Santa Barbara Island has the largest known breeding colony of Xantus’ murrelets in the world. Numbering a few thousand, the small, chubby, neckless sea birds nest in island cliffs. The island also has 127 plant species, including a few--like the Santa Barbara Island live-forever--that are found nowhere else in the world.

Another museum exhibit focuses on the Hyder family, the only one ever to live permanently on Santa Barbara Island.

Denton O. (Buster) Hyder, now 88, and his sister, Nora Rebich, 92, lived on the tiny, triangular island from 1914 to 1922--a period when their father, Alvin Hyder, leased it for $50 a year from the federal government. They were guests at the museum dedication.

“We eked out a living running sheep, raising goats, chickens, turkeys, geese and fishing,” Hyder recalled. “It was a tough life without any electricity or modern conveniences, but we managed.”

It was his sister’s first visit to the island in 71 years. They both live in Santa Maria now.

“Never thought I’d ever see this place again,” Nora Rebich said. “I miss all the tiny deer mice, the wild cats and wild rabbits that were everywhere out here when we lived here.”

The two old-timers recalled how their family members were the only occupants of the 1 1/2-mile-long, 3/4-mile-wide island. “Our parents, Nora and me, my dad’s two brothers, Uncle Clarence and Uncle Cleve, their wives and kids,” Hyder said.

“My dad, Uncle Clarence and Uncle Cleve built small houses, a barn and chicken coops out of wood they brought over from the mainland. They built reservoirs to catch rain water, as there’s no fresh water out here.”

The family tried raising hay and potatoes to earn income to keep going, but finally gave up in 1922, when they dismantled the structures they had erected and carried the lumber and all their possessions back to the mainland on the family boat.

“I stayed on alone until 1929 running sheep,” Hyder recalled.

Was he lonesome?

“Hell, no. Never,” Hyder replied. “I’d pass the time talking to the sheep.”

His sister described the fierce winds that frequently rake the island. “It was really scary when the winds kicked up. Our house was anchored with huge cables to keep it from blowing off the island into the ocean.

“The winds were so bad, chickens, turkeys and geese would be picked up and blown out into the sea. Sometimes you could feel the house being lifted off the foundation by the winds.”

Hyder and his sister were school age when they went to the island.

“Aunt Margaret was our teacher,” he said. “There were four of us in school: Nora, myself, and our two cousins. We sat on apple crates in our house and did our lessons.”

Santa Barbara Island rises 635 feet out of the water at Signal Peak and 562 feet at North Peak. Elephant seal, sea lion and harbor seal rookeries ring the island.

“I explored every inch of the island,” Hyder said. “Living out here for a boy was one adventure after another. During nesting season, I gathered sea gull eggs. We boiled and ate them and enjoyed the taste. I even ate barbecued deer mice.”

His father named some of the landmarks still listed on island charts, such as Graveyard Canyon, where the graves of two whalers who died on the island during the 1800s were found.

It was Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino who gave the island its name on Dec. 4, 1602--the feast of St. Barbara.

During World War II, the Navy erected a Quonset hut at Landing Cove to house personnel who watched out for Japanese warplanes. Santa Barbara Island became part of Channel Islands National Park in 1980.

The Navy Quonset hut was used as the national park’s Santa Barbara Island ranger’s residence and visitors center until two years ago, when it was replaced with a concrete structure, which houses the lone National Park ranger’s residence, the visitors center and now the museum.

The museum was paid for by the Santa Cruz Island Foundation, established by the late Dr. Carey Stanton to promote research on the Channel Islands, and by the Santa Barbara Foundation and the National Park Service.

Island Packers, which runs weekend trips to Santa Barbara in the spring and summer, transported 47 people to the dedication. Many were members of the Hyder family who had come from Oregon, Arizona and throughout California.