Santa Barbara County
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Source: Wikipedia
Hollister Ranch
The region presently known as the
Hollister Ranch is defined by 14,400 acres of fallow and fertile
fields, mountains and valleys along the Pacific Ocean of
California between Gaviota State Park canyon and Point
Conception. It was the site of some of the oldest known human
settlements in the new world, the last "native"
population of which was the Chumash, including two villages. It
became part of the extensive Spanish land grant known as Rancho
Nuestra Señora del Refugio, operated by the family of José
Francisco Ortega from 1794.
The land was purchased by William Welles Hollister after the
Civil War as part of vast acquisitions whose center was
originally located at Glen Annie, Tecolotito canyon.
Cattle ranching history
A cattle ranch since the days of the Ortegas, Hollister Ranch is
the fourth largest cattle ranch in Santa Barbara County having
shipped over 1,500,000 pounds of beef in the summer of 2005. As a
result of the Hollister Ranch Owners’ Association CC&Rs,
Santa Barbara County zoning and California’s Agricultural
Preserve Program, when fully built out, over 98% of the property
will continue to be devoted to well managed and sensitive cattle
grazing. Other benefits to Hollister Ranch owners as a result of
the cattle operation include a reduced fuel load in the event of
range fire and the tax benefits that result from adherence to the
restrictions imposed by the Uniform Rules of the Agricultural
Preserve. Relative to the land prices for parcels in Hollister
Ranch, however, the cattle ranching is probably uneconomic, and
may continue largely for the sake of tax breaks and aesthetic
considerations.
Recreational use
The Hollister family, previous owners
of the property, allowed some recreational use of the area. In
the late 1950s, they granted a pass to the regional Sportsman
Hunting Club, which later split into several smaller clubs,
including the Santa Barbara Surf Club. During over a decade of
regular use, the Santa Barbara Surf Club discovered and named
many surfing spots off the coast of 8 miles of beach, such as
Razor Blades, Drake's, Little Drake's, Utah, Rights and Lefts,
St. Augustine, Lefts and Rights, Cojo Reef, Cojo Point, Perko's
and others.
Today, recreational use of the beach and surrounding area is
studiously restricted to the shareowners of the current gated
community, and is sometime met with open hostility from owners
and staff. As California law allows public access to all land
below the mean high tide line, many surfers today boat into the
ranch from Gaviota, and anchor offshore.
Development and environmental
concerns
Many associated with the present Hollister Ranch see themselves
as responsible "stewards" of the land, ardently
claiming to have worked out a successful formula balancing
ecological preservation with residential development which
functions within both a working commercial agricultural operation
and a healthy natural habitat with a wide range of flora and
fauna. On the other hand, the owners' formula also precludes
public access through and over their property to beaches.
In 2004, the National Park Service abandoned a proposal to
designate parts of the Gaviota coastline, including the seashore
in front of Hollister Ranch, as National Seashore. Local
landowners, especially those in Hollister Ranch, mounted a
lobbying campaign to oppose the study. The Hollister Ranch
Owners' Association assessed its members at least $300000 to hire
a former congressman to lobby against the National Seashore
proposal.
Previous projects proposed since the 1970s have included oil
development, a nuclear power plant and high-density housing.
For over twenty years Santa Barbara area grade school children
have been encouraged to participate (at no cost to the schools)
in the Hollister Ranch Conservancy's “Tidepool
Classroom” that preserves intertidal life forms not found
elsewhere along the coast.
Hollister Ranch owners are currently restricted in terms of
development in a situation that many say will result in efficient
preservation of one of the last vestiges of the natural
California coastline. In the view of Hollister Ranch property
owners, they (private owners) are judged better stewards than
regional public, state or national preservation projects. The
owners are determined to protect this precious natural
environment from the "negative population impacts"
found at virtually all other beach areas in the southern part of
the state, where public access is guaranteed to all socioeconomic
classes, and not just private landowners and their staff[
Popular culture
Hollister Co., a clothing brand created by Abercrombie &
Fitch, purports to be the outcome of a surf shop founded by John
J. Hollister on Hollister Ranch in 1922.
This page was last updated July 19, 2009.