
The Spanish founders of Santa Barbara who built the Royal Presidio in 1782 were soldiers and priests who arrived overland, not by sea. Perhaps this bias prevented them from creating a seaport.
The 3.7 ocean front miles offer no natural harbor. Ships for years didn’t like Santa Barbara because they had to anchor far off shore. When storms arose they had to quickly weigh anchor and make for the channel or risk being washed onto the sand.
In 1769, the shoreline was home to five different Indian villages when the Portola expedition arrived by land. His men camped at what is now the Morton Bay Fig tree. De Anza passed through in 1774 and George Vancouver anchored off West Beach in 1793, refilling his water supplies from springs in Pershing Park. From 1800 Barbarenos lighted a lantern to guide ships and hung it high in a sycamore tree located at the corner of Milpas and Quinientos Streets, a location that is over half a mile inland today.



Disaster struck on December 21, 1812 when a powerful earthquake downed the Mission and caused a 50-foot tsunami (tidal wave) rushing ashore from the channel, sending water inland as far as Canon Perdio Street at Salsipuedes. Fortunately little damage was done.
Landing supplies and passengers in the 1850’s and ’60’s through the surf with its dangers and uncertainties prompted local businessmen to build a pier. The first went up at the base of Chapala in 1868, but its short length prevented deep-draft vessels from tying up.
John Stearns, a lumberyard man whose business was on East Beach adjacent to State Street, borrowed $40,000 from W.W. Hollister, the town’s richest man. He leased a pile driver, and by mid-1872 had a 1500-foot pier out into deep water ready for ocean going steamers to tie up. It wasn’t easy to get approval for his project because the vested interests of the smaller adjacent pier knew the longer pier would steal their business. In the end, a reluctant City Council approved his plan.
Passengers and commerce soon crowded the pier and Stearns replenished his lumberyard with wood taken directly from ships rather than floating ashore on the tide. A boom in visitors to Santa Barbara began. Wealthy health seekers, boaters and sunbathers flocked to the beach. West Beach became the destination of choice as tourists followed the footsteps of Indians and settlers. Bath Street was named because it led to the public bathing beach. From the 1870’s, bathing houses with heated pools built up in the Plaza del Mar Park area. Streetcar service extended the length of the beachfront from West to East Beach.
Then, in 1878, disastrous storms struck the piers. All anchored vessels were tossed on the beach, 900 feet was ripped from Stearns’ Wharf, and the Chapala Pier was destroyed. Stearns refused to rebuild until the city lowered the taxes imposed on his facility. The city agreed, so repairs were made. Six months later a freak waterspout crossed the channel, tossing boats at anchor into the pier; and again it was out of action until the following year. The need for a protective harbor became clear in the aftermath of the storms.
In 1887, the call for a harbor was strengthened when the Santa Barbara Yacht Club was incorporated. The pier’s popularity fell that year with the arrival of the railroad. Passenger business fell, but freight remained the lifeblood of the pier until the car and truck era. Stearns added a second access, carrying a rail line onto the pier that was connected to the main rail line in 1888. It served for 10 years until high seas destroyed it. Only a small part of this spur access remains today by the Channel Islands Marine Museum.
The luxurious 600-room Potter Hotel opened on the block between Bath and Chapala in anticipation of tourist arrival as the coastal rail line was completed to San Francisco in 1902. It anchored the tourist business to the West Beach location, the center even today.
Stearns died in 1902 and his widow continued ownership, hiring the manager away from the Carpinteria Pier. During the prohibition era, the wharf management ignored the discreet unloading of liquor for fear of gangland reprisals.

The Potter (then Ambassador Hotel) was destroyed by fire in 1921. The city turned down buying the 36-acre parcel for $100,000. From 1903 to 1931 public spirited citizens spearheaded a drive to acquire the Stearns’ Lumberyard property situated along the beach to the east of the pier. Additionally a group of 60 prominent citizens purchased the large tidal marsh known as the Salt Pond and gave it to the city in 1909. Later it was dredged for $50,000 by Mary Clark and converted to a fresh water lake, named in honor of her deceased daughter “André Clark Bird Refuge,” adjacent to the modern Zoo.
During the early 1900’s a honky-tonk atmosphere overtook the waterfront, especially after the arson fire of the Potter. Tearooms, skating rinks, a Pleasure Pier, and grass shack hotels where tourists stayed in palm-thatched cottages on the sand cluttered the waterfront. To prevent a slum from taking place, a group of citizens led by Frederick Peabody, the arrow shirt tycoon, bought many parcels and held them in trust until the city could take title. Another citizen group, led by Mr. and Mrs. David Gray, purchased even more parcels. The Grays built and furnished a $100,000 pavilion and gave it to the city – the Cabrillo Arts Center. With so much civic participation, the beautiful and irreplaceable Palm Park was possible.
Cabrillo Boulevard was moved further inland to keep it from falling prey to wave action, but even with its new location it didn’t escape the earthquake of 1925. Streetcar rails buckled and the railroad roundhouse at Punta Gorda Street fell down. Rebuilt in post-quake Spanish architecture, it was constructed to resemble a bullring.




Many changes occurred on the waterfront in the past 15 years. In the late 1980’s the five stoplights along the 101 Freeway, that were in place since the 1950’s, were removed, allowing traffic to flow more freely. The city approved a convention center in the 1980’s (now the Double Tree Inn) and the eight-acre extension of Chase Palm Park, complete with antique merry-go-round, across from the soccer field was completed in 1997. The total cost for the new park was $8 million. In 1989 a citizens art group donated the Bayer Chromatic Gate at a corner of the Cabrillo Baseball Field as a memorial commemorating the internationally famous Santa Barbara artist Herbert Bayer.

The preservation of the waterfront by citizen groups during the past century is one of the greatest gifts to the city. Stresses are still to come, but the beauty and everlasting interest of the waterfront remain an attraction for all visitors.