The history of Grover Beach in 185 sepia-toned images from the personal libraries of community residents and 80,000 words collected and written by one local woman will likely hit national bookstands this fall.

“Images of America: Grover Beach” is a book currently being created by north Grover Beach resident Anita Shower and coordinated through Arcadia Publishing, the city and numerous local residents who have contributed photographs.

Arcadia has published similar books on cities across the nation, with more than 4,000 titles in print.

Hundreds of books in the “Images of America” series include Morro Bay and Paso Robles, but Shower said Grover Beach is the first city in South County to have a book published in the series.

Shower said she discovered the series after reading a news article on “Images of America: Paso Robles.”

“I e-mailed Arcadia Publishing immediately and asked them if there was anyone who had come forward to write about Grover Beach, and they said ‘no,' (but) they were looking for someone. I said, ‘Look no further, I'll do it.'”

What followed was a 13-page book proposal that was accepted by Arcadia Publishing, she said.

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“They contacted me and said ‘OK, you're on,'” Shower said.

The book couldn't possibly grasp the grandiose scale of a place like Chicago or even Paso Robles and their plethora of historical data, Shower said

But that didn't distract her from years of writing in a diary, interviewing people and collecting photographs of local people and sites.

“It's not going to be the same caliber as Paso Robles, and it can't be what Chicago has, and it can't have what Morro Bay has” with Morro Rock as a signature landmark, said Shower. “People photograph Grand Avenue, they photograph the outskirts of Grover City, some of the buildings that were, some of the people here that had some classic faces.”

For Shower, it was a labor of love and interest.

“People know that Grover Beach is here, but they don't know what Grover Beach was; they don't know how it was put together,” she said.

“Coming from Miami, I ended up here and I thought, ‘This is the Wild West; this is the greatest place I've ever been in my life.'”

And she thought it was worth documenting.

“I keep a little diary about when people pass, just in case you need that knowledge at some point,” she said. “It kind of keeps your sequence of time in the right perspective.”

Covering the period back to 1887, the 11-chapter book will include a photographic history of Grover Beach's pioneers, like D.W. Grover, Isaac Sparks, the Bagwell family and the Okui family.

It also will highlight immigrants from the San Joaquin Valley, the Japanese and Filipino cultures' influence on the city and many of the faces that defined the city's history, she said.

There will also be a little segment on the city's name change from Grover City to Grover Beach and some brief details about how the city was actually named Huntington Beach at one point.

“The people at Arcadia did not know that it used to be Grover City,” said Shower.

Of Huntington Beach, she said, “There is very little that you can find on that.”

A pig farm on Farroll Road, the Grover Beach train station and photographs of some of the city's classic characters are among the features in the book.

The chronology will end in 1970 “because they wanted to keep it vintage,” said Shower.

Grover Beach city staff members have agreed to work with Shower to use historic photographs posted in City Hall.

The book's cover design has yet to be decided, but Shower said she hopes to collect as many photographs as possible for a June deadline to submit 20 photographs for the cover, from which Arcadia Publishing will select one.

She hopes the cover will include a portrait that is telling of the city, but she wouldn't say who it might be.

“With good luck, I'm going to put a face on the cover,” said Shower “It's going to say ‘Grover Beach.'”

Two growth spurts, one in the 1940s and another at the beginning of the 1950s, are also explored in the book, she said.

Shower said the best thing that ever happened to her was when she met her husband, Manferd, an orthodontist, on a flight to Hong Kong.

She began working for him in 1974 and discovered sources of historical information among people who came to him seeking straight teeth. The couple married in 1975.

For Shower, a resident of the city since the 1970s, the changes that have taken place there are inspiration enough to explore its roots, she said.

“You have to have an interest in history, and you have to have an interest in this area, which I do have,” she said.

Shower is currently pursuing a degree in business management from the Eastern Oregon University/University of Oregon. She is well-known as “Miss Etiquette” and her former column on manners in the Times-Press-Recorder.

She's also a regular guest on a show hosted by Rick Martel on Charter Cable channel 2.

After the book is published, Shower said, she hopes to pursue becoming a historian for the city.

“What I would like to do after I do this is interest the city in having someone become a historian, the way they have a historian in Pismo Beach, and start collecting photographs and family history and certainly photographs of houses before they're demolished and a high-rise is put in its place,” she said.

Have your photos published

Grover Beach resident Anita Shower is currently looking for photographs of Grover Beach dating from 1887 to 1970 to be included in “Images of America: Grover Beach.”

Photographs will be scanned and returned to the owners, and those published will be credited as coming from the personal libraries of contributors.

For more information and to donate photographs, contact Shower at 489-9696, visit anita@missetiquette.com or send them to Anita Shower, 867 N. Sixth St., Grover Beach, CA 93433.

The deadline for all materials is August. The book is expected to be released about three months later.

A book signing will be held following its release at Nan's Pre-Owned Books in Grover Beach.

June 4, 2007