Santa Barbara County is a sprawling, schizophrenic, 2,737 square mile giant, stretching from the long lines of surf rising in sparkling, glassy walls at Rincon Beach at its southwest corner, to the majestic, circa 1820 adobe brick mission and the tawny sands and balmy, palm-lined beaches and red tile roofs of Santa Barbara, on up the pristine Gaviota Coast to the Santa Ynez Valley’s rolling golden hills, dotted with majestic oaks, surrounding Lake Cachuma’s inland sea, with stately mountains receding into the distance, out to the cold, churning, fog-shrouded white water of Point Conception, and the launch pads at nearly Vandenberg Air Force Base, and on up to the cornucopia of strawberry, broccoli, cauliflower and flower fields surrounding Lompoc and Santa Maria, and east to the tiny, almost forgotten oil town of Cuyama, rusting away north of the mountainous National Forest and condor sanctuary that carves a huge chunk out of the center of it all.
More than 400,000 residents call it home. A few vaqueros are still riding the vast plains on ranches carved from the original land grant ranchos, but most of us work in the cities and towns near the coast.
From the glitz of Montecito’s star-studded streets and the searchlights and red carpets of the annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, to the fishermen culling the rich bounty of the sea, to the students at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the engineers in the research and development think tanks in Goleta, to the Danish bakeries of Solvang, to the workers laboring to bring home the harvest, we put our shoulders to the wheel in a languorously lovely piece of Eden.
Sideways brought the local wine industry, nationally second only to Napa, into the public eye. Eighty wineries are listed on the Vintner’s Association website. Robert Parker Jr., the world’s most influential wine critic, proclaimed “California’s Central Coast will rule America…No viticultural region in America has demonstrated as much progress in quality and potential for greatness as the Central Coast, with its Rhone varietals, and the Santa Barbara region, where the Burgundian varietals Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are planted in its cooler climates.”
Stars loving Santa Ynez include guitarist Robert Cray; Cheryl Ladd; Bo Derek; the late Fess Parker (Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, the dad in Old Yeller) and his friend, singer Ed Ames; songwriter Bernie Taupin; Jimmy Messina; Noah Wyle; David Crosby; and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. And of course Michael Jackson’s former Neverland Ranch is here.
Ronald Reagan relaxed at his 680 acre “Rancho Del Cielo,” Ranch of the Sky. He bought it in 1974, when he was still governor, and he loved to be atop the Santa Ynez mountains, close to heaven, as the name implied. Riding with Nancy, chopping wood, or just taking in the incredible views made him happy. The Danish village of Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley stretched out far below him; clouds drifted past the modest adobe cottage he had personally remodeled. The President was up at the ranch, in a jovial mood, the day he joked, “The bombing starts in five minutes”—blame it on too much fresh air. The ranch is now owned by the Young America’s Foundation, and preserved as Reagan left it.
The timeless story of this place will continue long after all of us are gone.
For more about Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara County, check out Sideways in Neverland, available at Barnes & Noble.
