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Santa Barbara County, officially the County of Santa Barbara (Spanish: Condado de Santa Bárbara), is a county located in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 448,229. The county seat is Santa Barbara, and the largest city is Santa Maria.
- Pre-Contact History
- Spanish Period
- Mexican Period
- U.S. Annexation; Gold Rush; Haley; Civil War
- Victorian Period
- Early 20th Century to World War II
- After World War II
- See Also
- References
- External Links
The lands flanking the Santa Barbara Channel, both the mainland including present day Santa Barbara, and the Channel Islands, has been continuously inhabited by the Chumash people and their ancestors for at least 13,000 years. The oldest human skeleton yet found in North America, Arlington Springs Man, was unearthed on Santa Rosa Island, approximat...
First encounters and Portola expedition
The first Europeans to see the area were members of a Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed through the Channel in 1542, and anchored briefly in the vicinity of Goleta. Later, on the return voyage, Cabrillo injured his leg during a fight with natives on Santa Catalina Island and died from gangrene. He was buried either on San Miguel Islandor Mescalitan Island – the exact burial place of Cabrillo has long been a mystery. In 1602, Spanish maritime...
Presidio, Mission, Cieneguitas chapel, and 1812 earthquake
Portola himself, however, did not stay, and it was not until 1782 that a force of soldiers, led by Don Felipe de Neve came to build the Presidio of Santa Barbara, one of several military outposts meant to protect Alta California against foreign interests and to protect the missions against attacks by hostile natives. The Presidio was not completed until 1792, and Father Fermín Lasuén dedicated the nearby Mission Santa Barbara on the feast day of Santa Barbara(December 4, 1786). He chose for h...
Bouchard raids
The most serious military threat to Santa Barbara during the Spanish period was not by a colonial power, but by Hippolyte Bouchard, a French privateer working for the Argentine government, which was, along with Mexico, attempting to throw off Spanish rule. Bouchard, who was given the task of destroying as many Spanish assets as possible, and in particular the ports in the Americas, possessed two well-armed frigates, which had sufficient armament and crews to destroy any lightly defended towns...
Indian rebellion
In 1822 the Spanish rule ended and their flag came down forever, with their loss in the Mexican War of Independence. Santa Barbara, along with the rest of Alta California, became a territory of independent Mexico. One of the earliest notable events in the Mexican period in Santa Barbara was the February 1824 Indian rebellion. The Indians especially resented the poor and scapegoating treatment given them by the soldiers stationed at the Presidio, who were resentful of being unpaid by the new g...
Civilian government and rancho land grants
During the Mexican period, civilian government replaced military and mission control for the first time. An alcalde (roughly equivalent to a "strong" mayor) was appointed, supplemented by other civilian officials. The Mexican government opened Alta California to trade with the United States, Great Britain and other foreign countries, and exports became important to the local economy. Principal export commodities were tallow and hides, both of which were carried by California clippers to Bosto...
Mexican–American War
The end of the Mexican period came quickly for Santa Barbara, but without bloodshed, during the United States' conquest of California in the Mexican–American War, which had broken out in May 1846 over the annexation of Texas. In August, Commodore Robert F. Stockton anchored a warship in Santa Barbara harbor and deployed a contingent of ten Marines to occupy the town. They proceeded to the Presidio where they ran the Stars and Stripes over the city for the first time; not long afterwards, seei...
Gold rush settlers, incorporation, street grid, and newspaper
Change came quickly after the end of the war. Gold was found at Sutter's Mill in the Sierra foothills, and hordes of gold-seekers flooded into California from the eastern United States, and other places in the world, to become rich. Few did, but Santa Barbara began to attract settlers, as newcomers discovered the charms of the place, including that almost anything planted would grow there. In 1850 California became the 31st state, and immediately after its establishment both Santa Barbara Cit...
Lawlessness, high temperature, and drought
The 1850s was a tumultuous and violent period. Life in the town was disrupted by rowdy Americans recently returned from the gold camps in the Sierra foothills, and gangs of toughs and highwaymen. Some of these lawless newcomers targeted the local Spanish population, causing violent racial incidents including lynchings. Outlaws such as Joaquin Murrieta (the Zorro of Hollywood legend, but likely a composite of several different bandits) preyed on travelers on the roadways, and even on citizens...
The town continued to grow, and slowly ended its isolation after the American Civil War. The war itself had little effect on Santa Barbara. One troop of cavalry organized to join the Union cause, but never saw action against Confederate forces; they served briefly and bloodlessly in Arizona versus Apacheraids. In 1869, the first coeducational prepa...
Silent film industry and continued growth
Santa Barbara was an important part of the U.S. silent film industry from 1910 to 1922. The American Film Manufacturing Company, founded in Chicago in 1910, formally moved its western Flying A Studios from La Mesa, California to Santa Barbara in August, 1912. The Santa Barbara facility became American's main studio; it covered two city blocks centered at State and Mission streets, and was at the time the largest movie studio in the world. American produced approximately 1,200 films, but only...
1925 earthquake
The most destructive earthquake in Santa Barbara history, and the first destructive earthquake in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, occurred on June 29, 1925, converting much of the town to heaps of rubble. While the quake's epicenter was centered on an undetermined fault offshore, most of the damage came about due to two strong aftershocks which occurred onshore and five minutes apart. The intensity on the Modified Mercalli scalewas determined to be VIII for the coast from...
Oil fields and World War II
In 1928, oil was found at the Ellwood Oil Field on the other side of Santa Barbara, and development of this new and rich pool was fast: the peak production in 1930, only two years later, was 14.6 million barrels (2,320,000 m3) of oil. As at the Summerland Oil Field, derricks went along piers into the ocean, and the cliffs were dotted with storage tanks. Some of this development remains to the present day, with one active wastewater disposal well and several large storage tanks adjacent to the...
After the war ended, many people who had seen Santa Barbara during the war came back to stay. The population grew by 10,000 by 1950, in just five years. During this time the University of California took over the blufftop Marine camp, turning it into a modern university. The burst of growth brought traffic, housing, and water problems, which led to...
Baker, Gayle. Santa Barbara, Another HarborTown History. HarborTown Histories, Santa Barbara. 2003. ISBN (print) 0-9710984-1-7, (e-version) 978-0-9879038-1-5Birchard, Robert S. Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara. Arcadia Publishing. 2007. ISBN 0-7385-4730-1Graham, Otis L.; Bauman, Robert; Dodd, Douglas W.; Geraci, Victor W.; Murray, Fermina Brel. Stearns Wharf: Surviving Change on the California Coast. Graduate Program in Public Historical Studies, U...Tompkins, Walker A. Santa Barbara, Past and Present. Tecolote Books, Santa Barbara, CA, 1975.Website. www .simivalley .org. Simi Valley ( / ˈsiːmiː / ⓘ; Chumash: Shimiyi) [8] [9] [10] is a city in the valley of the same name in the southeast region of Ventura County, California, United States. Simi Valley is 40 miles (65 km) from Downtown Los Angeles, making it part of the Greater Los Angeles Area.
Santa Barbara County is one of the most beautiful counties in California, and the video highlights the many facets of our county including community, business and environment. This video is also displayed at the California State Capitol Building.
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Santa Barbara County, officially the County of Santa Barbara, is a county located in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 448,229. The county seat is Santa Barbara, and the largest city is Santa Maria.
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