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Although the Chumash Indians were the original inhabitants of Santa
Barbara, the Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo officially
“discovered” it in 1542. Santa Barbara remained nameless until 1602,
when Sebastian Vizcaíno arrived on 4 December, the feast day of Saint
Barbara. The pious Vizcaíno named his “discoveries” along the
California coast, including
San Diego,
San Pedro, and
Catalina Island,
for the Catholic saints on whose feast days he arrived there.
Unfortunately, Barbara was one of the saints the Vatican removed from
its calendar in 1969, due to the lack of evidence that she ever existed.
A century and a half after Vizcaíno, both the Spanish king and the
Catholic Church got serious about consolidating their respective empires
in California. As the Spanish built military and administrative
outposts, a group of Franciscan friars originally led by Father
Junípero Serra founded 21 missions. The Catholic version of
history says that the missions brought the gifts of civilization and
salvation to the heathen Indians. But the Indians didn’t always
appreciate those gifts, which often came at the price of enslavement,
eradication of their culture, and decimation from smallpox and measles.
Serra personally established the first nine California missions.
Although he planned his tenth mission for Santa Barbara, he did not live
to see it built. Construction was delayed because of a disagreement with
the Spanish governor about whether the military or the Franciscans had
priority on Indian slave labor. Serra had been dead a year and a half
when the mission was finally dedicated on 4 December 1786. The
Franciscans must have found the Chumash Indians particularly amenable to
conversion (or perhaps particularly good slaves), since they built two
other missions nearby. Santa Inés is near Solvang in the
Santa Ynez Valley, and
La Purisima is near Lompoc.
In addition to being a museum and tourist attraction, the mission is an
active parish church. I took these pictures just after 8 o’clock on
a clear weekday morning. The worshippers who attended morning Mass had
driven away, and the first tour buses had yet to arrive. This is
probably the ideal, quiet time to appreciate (and to photograph) the
mission.
The original 1786 building was a nondescript adobe that was expanded
until an earthquake destroyed it (and the other two nearby missions) in
1812. The current building dates from 1820. While its layout is similar
to many early 19th century churches in Mexico, the Mission’s distinctive
facade has earned it the sobriquet “Queen of the Missions.” Father
Antonio Ripoll, who supervised the construction, copied the design of a
temple from a Roman book on architecture written in 27 BCE by Marcus
Vitruvius Pollio. The facade includes pink columns with Ionic capitals.
Replacing Vitruvius’ original goddesses are a statue of Saint Barbara,
along with representations of Faith, Hope, and Charity inspired by the
Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
Father Serra lived long enough to consecrate the church at the Presidio.
Begun in 1782, the Presidio was the military and administrative
headquarters for the region between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. It
was left to decay when the Spanish lands became Mexican, and
construction of the subsequent American street grid tore down much of
what was left. A state park in the middle of downtown, the Presidio
complex is a reconstruction based on archaeological research
ongoing since 1963.
After a 1925 earthquake destroyed downtown Santa Barbara, planners
rebuilt it with the distinctive adobe, stucco, and red tile roofs of the
“Spanish Colonial Revival” architectural style. Perhaps the finest
example of this architecture is the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. The
tourism promoters who came up with “the American Riviera” appointed it
“the most beautiful government building in the United States.” This time
it’s hard to argue with them.
It’s worth spending a morning or afternoon exploring the unique fusion
of Spanish adobe and red tiles, American ironwork, and thoroughly
whimsical design touches inside and out. All that, along with the
landscaped grounds and the great view from its clock tower, makes the
Courthouse reason enough to visit Santa Barbara— and to merit
its own page.
Also downtown, across from the Amtrak train station, is the Moreton Bay
fig tree. Planted in 1877, it is reputedly the largest example of its
species in the United States— 51 meters across and 23 meters high, with
a trunk nearly four meters in diameter.
One thing “the American Riviera” genuinely has in common with its French
namesake is kilometers of popular beaches, all along a south-facing
coast that maximizes the hours of sunlight (except when the
all-too-common “marine layer” of clouds blankets the coast).
Also in common with Mediterranean beach towns, Santa Barbara has a busy
harbor for small boats. Although its days as a commercial port are long
gone, a small fishing fleet remains. Many of the boats docked in the
marina are houseboats. Locked gates officially allow dock access only to
boat owners, but those owners apparently aren’t as rigorous as the city
about enforcing the restriction. Thanks to one of them, who held the
gate open as he was leaving the dock, I enjoyed a leisurely Sunday
afternoon wandering around and photographing the colorful boats.
The waterfront also has the distinctly un-Mediterranean staple of
American beach resorts, a wooden pier with a boardwalk. Stearns Wharf
was originally built in 1872, making it the oldest working pier in
California. Extending 700 meters, it let ships load and unload
passengers and cargo even at low tide. It has been repeatedly
patched and rebuilt after a seemingly endless series of disasters. The
wharf has endured storms, fires, a tornado, the 1925 earthquake, and
even a group of Civil War veterans whose enthusiastic marching nearly
collapsed it in 1887. Today it is a very popular tourist trap full of
restaurants and shops— along with the parking lots that take up most of
its 1.5 hectares. Over six million tourists visit the wharf each year,
most of whom surely are unaware of its history.
At the entrance to the wharf is the Dolphin Fountain, officially called
the “Bicentennial Friendship Fountain.” As the name suggests, this 1982
sculpture commemorates the city’s bicentennial (based on the building of
the Presidio). It also commemorates three of Santa Barbara’s five sister
cities (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Yalta, Ukraine; and Toba, Japan), where
there are similar dolphin friendship fountains.
For all its tourist-tackiness, Stearns wharf offers a great view of the
palm-lined beaches, the city, and the backdrop of the Santa Ynez
Mountains (beyond which lies the very scenic Santa Ynez Valley).
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