Overview History of Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, California is a haven for the rich and famous. It’s a picture-perfect destination for the vacationer. It’s a place of scenic beauty, pristine Pacific Ocean beaches and tranquility away from the busy big city life. It’s both modest and lavish. It has the style of a Mediterranean seaside village with sophistication and glitz. With its beautiful weather, gentle ocean breezes and endless panorama, the residents of Santa Barbara are fortunate to call it home. But native inhabitants that settled here thousands and thousands of years ago were its original citizens.

Santa Barbara is astonishingly gorgeous, but we can only imagine how breathtaking it must have been nearly 13,000 years ago when the ancestors of the Chumash Indians settled in the area of what would become Santa Barbara, California. Before the first Europeans arrived, the Chumash numbered tens of thousands across over 150 villages spread from San Luis Obispo to Oxnard from the coastline to the interior mountain ranges. Some were island Chumash villages located on the channel islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Amacapa.

The Chumash were hunters, gatherers and fishermen. They built canoes from redwood tree trunks for transportation as they traded with other Indian tribes in the central California areas. They networked as societies and for resource economics. Today they are still hospitable people and are thriving as their native numbers grow. But that was not the case hundreds of years ago when disease brought by colonizing Europeans dwindled their population to near extinction.

The first Europeans to encounter the Chumash Indians were Portuguese explorers led to the area by conquistador Juan Rodriques Cabrillo who came in 1542 but moved on fairly quickly. A Spanish cartographer named Sebastian Vizcaino and his fleet with crew arrived in 1602 seeking an inland water passage to the Atlantic. They were met with a severe storm that forced them to seek safety within a small harbor. They prayed for protection from the storm to St. Barbara for whom the harbor was named by Vizcaino. Hence the name “ Santa Barbara” came to be although his story and encounter with the native Chumash was brief.

In 1772 Felipe de Neve led a group of Spanish soldiers from Mexico to Santa Barbara. They built a military fort which still stands today. Many of the Chumash resettled outside the fort and the Spanish began forcefully converting the Indians to Christianity which led to a series of short-lived rebellions against Spanish rule. Turmoil, disease and earthquake disasters led to a severe decline of the Chumash population to about 250 natives by1839.

Spain ruled the Santa Barbara area as well as the new territory of California until 1822 when Mexico won its independence from Spain. Spanish settlers that were loyal to Mexico were given land in the Santa Barbara area leading to the expanse of agricultural farming as its primary industry. In 1846 at the height of the Mexican American War, Colonel John Fremont and his American soldiers claimed Santa Barbara for the United States.

Santa Barbara’s agricultural growth continued as it avoided the “gold fever” of 1849 that attracted thousands of easterners to California in search of riches. Santa Barbara began a future in tourism in the 1880s as new money and wealthy settlers were attracted to the beauty and tranquility of Santa Barbara.

The railroad arrived in 1901 connecting Santa Barbara to San Francisco replacing the Wells Fargo Stage Line. As more modern times evolved through advanced transportation, Santa Barbara slowly evolved from an agricultural and ranching community to tourism becoming the hotspot for vacationers. As the home of the American Film Company, by some accounts Santa Barbara was California’s first “Hollywood” as hundreds of movies were filmed in the area.

Today Santa Barbara continues to thrive as a popular getaway vacation destination. And the Chumash? Well their population has increased to over 5,000 and they own a successful casino in the area which combined with Santa Barbara’s other attractions is an enticement to vacationers from around the world.