Hotels in Santa Barbara
Many tourists like to see the culture, the tourist attractions the scenery and the architecture, and the landscapes of the city. Some may want to visit the city to see the historic regions or the landscapes of the reign. Some may want a hotel that has good views and good access to the tourist attractions of the region. Some may want a hotel that has a good reputation and good prices.
Santa Barbara is a city in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the only such section on the west coast, between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the sea, and having a Mediterranean climate, it is called California's South Coast, and also sometimes referred to casually as the American Riviera.
The city is located about 140 km WNW of Los Angeles, along the Pacific coast. This stretch of coast along southern Santa Barbara County is often referred to as the "American Riviera" because its geography and Mediterranean climate are reminscent of the French and Italian Riviera coastline along the Mediterranean. The Santa Ynez Mountains, an east-west trending range, rise dramatically behind the city, with several peaks exceeding 1,200 m. Covered with chaparral and with sandstone outcrops, they make a famously scenic backdrop to the town.
Goleta is about 13 km west of the city of Santa Barbara, along the coast (the coast runs east to west in this portion of southern California). Nearby is the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California and the student community of Isla Vista. The area of present-day Goleta was populated for thousands of years by the native Chumash people; locally they were known by the first European settlers as Canaliños (for the canoes they built to travel to the Channel Islands). One of the largest villages, S'axpilil, was north of the Goleta Slough, not far from the present-day Santa Barbara Airport. The first European visitor was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed past in 1542. During the 1980s, discovery of some 16th century cannon on the beach led to the advancement of a theory that Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Goleta Slough in 1579, where he may have spent several weeks repairing his ship. In the 18th century, two Spanish expeditions came to the area; the second founded the Presidio of Santa Barbara and Mission to the east, and began the work of converting the Chumash to Roman Catholicism. During the 19th century most of the area, formerly covered with oak trees, was deforested; ranching was the principal land use during this time. The two main local ranchers, Nicolas A. Den and Daniel Hill, Americans married to the daughters of Spanish ranchers, became wealthy in the late 1840s by selling locally-grown beef to the thousands of miners who came to the California Gold Rush. The Goleta Valley was a prominent lemon-growing region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was largely agricultural. In addition, several areas, especially the Ellwood Mesa, were developed for oil and natural gas extraction. In the 1920's aviation pioneers started using portions of the Goleta Slough that had silted in due to agriculture to land and takeoff. As former tidelands, the title to these lands was unclear. Starting in 1940, boosters from the City of Santa Barbara lobbied and obtained federal funding and passed a bond measure to formally develop an airport on the Goleta Slough; the airport development was accelerated by USA response to an attack on the Ellwood Oil Field by a Japanese submarine, see Attacks on North America during World War II. The Marine Corps undertook completion of the airport and established living quarters on the site of the current University of California, Santa Barbara campus. The city's geography at the feet of the Santa Ynez Mountains has made it subject to sudden, extremely hot winds locally called "sundowners", similar to the more famous Santa Ana winds in the Los Angeles and San Diego regions.
Carpinteria is a small oceanside city located in the southeastern extremity of Santa Barbara County, California, east of Santa Barbara and northwest of Ventura. The Spanish named the area Carpinteria because the Chumash tribe, which lived in the area, had a large seagoing canoe building enterprise, or "carpentry shop" there; this was due to the availability of naturally occurring surface tar which was used to seal the boats. You can still see the tar oozing out of the bluffs at Tar Pits Park, on the beach just south of the campground. Carpinteria Beach is known to have a gentle, sloping terrain and calm waves. Seals and sea lions can be seen in the area December through May, as well as an occasional gray whale. Tidepools contain starfish, sea anemones, crabs, snails, octopuses and sea urchins. A popular campground is located adjacent to the beach. There is good bird watching at Salt Marsh Nature Park.
Santa Barbara is a year-round tourist destination renowned for its fair weather, downtown beaches, and Spanish architecture. In addition to the city's cultural assets, several iconic destinations lie within the city's limits. Mission Santa Barbara, The Queen of the Missions, is located on a rise about two miles inland from the harbor, and is maintained as an active place of worship, sightseeing stop, and national historic landmark. The Santa Barbara County Courthouse, a red tiled Spanish-Moorish structure, provides a sweeping view of the downtown area from its open air tower. The Presidio of Santa Barbara, a Spanish military installation built in 1782, was central to the town's early development and remains an icon of the city's colonial roots.
Built about 1825 by Don Rafael Gonzales, the one-story Rafael Gonzalez House house with two one-room wings, covered verandas, and a tile roof is typical of Mexican era adobe town houses of moderate size. Its main section is about 90' by 18', the adobe walls at least 2' thick. Covered verandas extend along both long sides of the house.
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