This story originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Green Guide 2025/26,
a collaboration publication between ‘Santa Barbara Independent’ and ‘Bluedot Living‘.
A recent visit to Arroyo Hondo was my first, but I found it to be unexpectedly familiar. The creek-carved canyon, the vegetation and tall trees, the quiet, even the smells transported me back to the nearby Hollister Ranch, where I had lived as a teenager.
When I was 13, we moved “just for the summer” into the grand house built in Bulito Canyon for Jim and Lottie Hollister in 1910. It had been empty for 10 years, and to take ownership, all we had to do was clean it up — which took weeks of hard work by my five siblings and me. My summer was ruined.
At a time when I desperately craved a social life, I found myself in the middle of nowhere, cut off by 30 miles of freeway, 12 miles of a bone-rattling, suffocatingly dusty road, and barbed wire gates. I hated that drive; I hated the ranch.
We stayed for 11 years.
My mother once said that for her, every day at the ranch was a new adventure. She brought the formal gardens back to life, tended the neglected fruit orchard, and dealt with endless water challenges and ranch politics.
I preferred my adventures to take place in books. While everyone else surfed and swam, hunted and fished, gathered abalone, rode horses, and went to brandings, I stayed in my room and read.
When I returned to the area to learn about the value of preserving it and its vital importance to scientists, naturalists, artists — and children — I couldn’t help regretting my stubborn lack of appreciation for the paradise that had once been mine to enjoy. That day at Arroyo Hondo, I saw the landscape of my past with new eyes.
Visiting Arroyo Hondo
At Arroyo Hondo, it’s still possible to get a glimpse of what California looked like when only the Chumash lived here 5,000 years ago. A canyon carved by the deep creek that gives it its name, Arroyo Hondo descends from towering sandstone cliffs down through oak canopies and meadows and passes under the freeway and rail trestle to the ocean.
With 782 acres owned and managed by The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, Arroyo Hondo boasts one of the most unique botanic regions in the U.S, rich in biodiversity and habitat for numerous plant and animal species, including endangered ones.
The preserve is open the first and third full weekends of the month, weather permitting Reservations are free and required. Docent-led nature hikes are offered on open Saturdays mornings.
