Our Village...
From Montecito's wooded hills to Hope Ranch's riding trails and the Santa Ynez Valley's wide open spaces, Santa Barbara's renowned beauty is more than skin deep. Active, community-minded residents have shaped this metropolitan area into a well-rounded, multifaceted gem of a place for the discriminating person to live and work.

Opportunities abound in Santa Barbara to enjoy a life tailored your individual needs. There's quality shopping, over 400 fine restaurants, top educational institutions such as the University of California, and easy jet and rail transportation for those whose lifestyles keep them on the move.

Montecito
Once a fashionable health resort, the tiny seaside village of Montecito was discovered just after the turn of the century by some of the most influential families in the United States. Soon the wooded Montecito hills, just east of Santa Barbara's city limits, began to sprout such magnificent creations as marble palaces, picture-book Normandy castles, elegant Italian palazzos, gracious Cape Cod colonials, and regal English manor houses. For those looking for private schools, country clubs, quaint shops, and quiet lanes that lead to secluded homes, the beach, mountain trails, creeks, and waterfalls - pastoral Montecito is waiting, pristine.

July 16 used to be celebrated as "Montecito Day" by the old-time Spanish residents, and was always marked by a gala fandango and fiesta at the Lorenzana adobe on Parra Grande Lane.

Summerland
Summerland is a relaxed, tiny, hillside community snuggled on the coast between Carpinteria and Montecito with breathtaking ocean and island views. There are large and small homes, condominiums and ranches to choose from.

Carpinteria
Carpinteria is a peaceful, seaside city located in the fertile Carpinteria Valley just south of Montecito. Come soak up the sunshine at the beach or simply enjoy the small town pleasures of Carpinteria where tree-shaded streets, parades and craft shows evoke a gentle way of life. Carpinteria is home to a world-renowned surfing area off Rincon Point and a beautiful swimming beach. Carpinteria State Beach Park encompasses wooded groves and 4,000 feet of ocean frontage and offers overnight camping and the best surf-fishing and tide-pooling for miles around.

Goleta
Goleta is a nicely established residential area of tract homes. Many of the engineers and employees of the aerospace companies live in this area. Above Cathedral Oaks Road you move into an area of rolling hills and views of the ocean and mountains. There are some fine residences and citrus and avocado ranches. There is an abundance of condominiums and housing developments offering a variety of affordable living.

San Marcos Pass
San Marcos Pass is at the top of the pass (Hwy 154) just 15 minutes from town, yet located away from the hustle and bustle. This small community offers views, seclusion, and a chance for a rural lifestyle. Second homes in this area, on National Forest leased land, can also be purchased.

Hope Ranch
As you pass through the gate and under the handsome, filigreed sign suspended across Las Palmas Drive, you enter another world - Hope Ranch Park. Towering palms, planted in the early 1900s, line the main boulevard. Wearing jodhpurs and shiny black boots, young girls on horseback gallop along a tree-lined trail. An early morning jogger circles serene Laguna Blanca Lake.

A golfing foursome takes turns putting on a manicured green at the La Cumbre Country Club. Incorporated in 1924, the Hope Ranch Park Homes Association watches over this elite residential area. Membership in the association is automatic upon purchasing a home and brings many privileges: the private beach, bridle paths, tennis courts, and the advantages of the Hope Ranch Riding Trails Association.

Mesa
Mesa, a Spanish word meaning "table," is a common geographical place name in the Southwest. It has been applied to the flat bench fronting the ocean along Santa Barbara's southwestern border since mission days. Our Mesa once extended from Arroyo Burro to the Santa Barbara Cemetery. The western portion of the Mesa, running to Arroyo Burro or Hendry's Beach, as it was popularly known, formed a part of the original Pueblo Lands granted to Santa Barbara Presidio by the King of Spain in 1782.

The Wilcox Property, now known as the as the Douglas Family Preserve, at southwestern tip of the Mesa was a commercial nursery, currently preserved for public use. The neighborhood between Mesa Lane and Oliver Road, while originally plotted as early as 1920, did not develop until after World War II when many veterans built homes with the help of GI loans.City weather records show that the Mesa's winter temperatures are 10 to 12 degrees warmer than downtown, and 10 to 12 degrees cooler in the summer.

Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara has a diversity of residential areas. The Upper East Side is the older, elegant section of Santa Barbara. Many large homes in this area date back to the turn of the century. Homes are generally well kept, and this is a wonderful in-town location.

The Riviera, named after its European namesake, with its charming narrow winding streets, boasts custom homes with views of the city, harbor, ocean and islands beyond. This area gets the most amount of sunlight - from early morning to late evening.

Hope Ranch is a community encompassing 1,863 acres. It is situated in the southeastern portion of Santa Barbara County between Highway 101 and the ocean. It consists of a broad flat mesa and low rolling knolls broken by a magnificent valley and covered with splendid live oaks. The scenery from the home sites on the knolls is indescribably beautiful. Landward, the purple mountains of the Santa Ynez range – the green foothills and rich valley crowned in the distance by the famous old Santa Barbara Mission, and seaward, the Santa Barbara channel, the Channel Islands and the broad Pacific greet the eye. Hope Ranch is divided into acreage plots of varying size. The lots are irregular in shape and laid out with particular regard to the character of the land, its scenic outlook and the home site possibilities contained therein. As a result of this care, each of these locations has a charming individuality. In order to conserve the beauty of this property and insure a desirable neighborhood, suitable building restrictions have been imposed. While not excessive, these are the guarantee that such buildings will best promote the interests of the community as a whole. Governed by a homeowners association since the early 1920s, the development of the property has benefited from the oversight of an organization established to assure a unique quality of life. Those who have had the good fortune to live in Hope Ranch will tell you that it is a place like no other.

The Mesa is located on the bluffs just beyond the harbor and extends from the ocean up to the top of the hill. There are both tract and custom homes, many with ocean and/or city views. San Roque is a charming area with smaller, individual homes in a quiet, yet convenient in-town location. Architectural styles range from small California cottages to classic Tudors and Spanish haciendas. www.santabarbara.com

Other Santa Barbara Areas include the Westside, Mission Canyon, San Roque, The Samarkand, and the Waterfront. See below:

Westside
The "Westside Story" of Santa Barbara is laid in our city's first suburb to be initiated by Anglos rather than Hispanics; the Spanish genesis of the city was located on the Eastside. In 1850, when the United States annexed California to the Union, the Westside was open grazing range and farmland, turning marshy near the beach. Today this area is solidly overlaid with urban development extending inland to the Goleta Valley, making it the most densely populated neighborhood in Santa Barbara. The earliest historical reference to the Westside came in 1793 when Captain George Vancouver, a British explorer-scientist, who was circumnavigating the globe, anchored the Discovery off West Beach and received permission for his seacook to chop stovewood from the Mesa oak groves and refill his water tanks from a steep at the base of the Mesa bluffs near Pershing Park.

Mission Canyon
Mission Canyon, which with the Old Mission complex and the area bounded on the south by Mission Street, making up Santa Barbara's "Mission District," is unique. No residential neighborhood in the city boasts a richer historical background, or offers more relics and landmarks of Old Spanish Days.Fr. Junipero Serra, when he helped found the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara in 1782, intended Santa Barbara's Franciscan mission to be built in El Montecito near the present site of Our Lady of Mount Carmel church on East Valley Road. But four years later, when his successor, Fr. Fermin Lasuen OFM, arrived to establish our mission, he decided that Montecito was too infested with grizzly bears and renegade Indians to risk building a mission so far removed from the protection of the presidio soldiers, so he looked elsewhere.

San Roque
Few residential neighborhoods of Santa Barbara can boast the rich historical background of the San Roque and Rutherford Park areas. Ten thousand years ago the area, bounded by Ontare Road, Foothill Road, Alamar Avenue and State Street, was an open expanse of treeless grassland, sloping up to the knees of the foothills and bisected by the jungled course of San Roque Canyon. Now a built-up, economically stabilized suburb, it is admired for its sweeping curved streets, its luxuriant landscaping, and its harmonious blend of many architectural themes - Spanish Colonial, English Tudor, French Normandy, California Redwood, Italian and American Colonial, mostly built since 1925. San Roque features older, custom homes with charm.

The Samarkand
Samarkand meant "the land of heart's desire" in the archaic Persian tongue. It identified the fabulous Asian city where a mythical Queen Scheherazade spent her 1001 Arabian nights. In Santa Barbara, the melodic oriental name was first applied in 1920 to a deluxe Persian style hotel, formerly a boy's school. As the dominating landmark of a hilly, elevated neighborhood, the Samarkand gave its name to an area bounded on the east by Oak Park, on the north by Hollister Avenue (now De La Vina Street), on the west by a ranch boundary fence centered on modern Las Positas Road, and on the south by the old Coast Highway and the railroad. Samarkand is a delightful area of homes full of charm.

The Waterfront
The Spaniards who founded Santa Barbara in 1782 were soldiers and priests, not seafaring men. Perhaps that is why no provision was made for a seaport. The waterfront, extending 3.6 miles from Shoreline Park to the Bird Refuge, offers no natural headlands to create a safe anchorage. Early-day mariners dreaded Santa Barbara's exposed roadstead so much they used to drop anchor a mile offshore, ready to slip their cables and head for the open sea if foul weather threatened. As recently as 70 years ago the ocean used to cover what today is the City College football field, dashing its surf against cliffs now paneled by La Playa Stadium. Leadbetter Beach did not exist. But just around the corner, east of Castle Rock (a long-vanished promontory), semi-sheltered West Beach became the traditional landing place for visitors. It is thus overlaid with history covering two centuries. The Santa Barbara Waterfront stretches from the Harbor across from Santa Barbara City College along Cabrillo Boulevard past Stearns Wharf to East Beach, which is near the Santa Barbara Zoo and Bird Refuge. There are Hotels and Motels located along the Waterfront, but behind them are charming homes, duplexes, triplexes and apartment buildings.

The Riviera
Bridging the two mile span which separates Mission and Sycamore Canyons, the sylvan uplift which the padres knew as the "mission ridge" has for the past 65 years been known as "the Riviera" due to its resemblance to slopes along the Mediterranean coasts of France and Italy. Santa Barbarans lucky enough to live on this ridge attach premium value to their homes because of their unsurpassed views of the city, mountains, sea and islands.

Santa Ynez Valley
The valley is just 30 minutes from Santa Barbara, over the Santa Ynez Mountains, with its breathtaking vineyards, pastures, and ranches where real cowboys still ride the range. When you hit the summit of San Marcos Pass and descend into the valley, you can see mountain ranges that seem to go on forever, changing in shades of blue and purple. Around a curve you'll find the surprise of Lake Cachuma, serene and protected. Agriculture continues to be an economic mainstay, and farms growing flowers and produce sell their wares throughout Southern California.

The valley has its own small airport. You can go up in a hot air balloon and drift over mile after mile of open range crisscrossed by white rail fences. Around the town of Solvang cluster storybook houses. In the Victorian villages of Los Olivos and Ballard you'll find two of the finest hotels and restaurants in the country. Santa Ynez sports a frontier image with wood buildings and a Wild West ambiance.