Ellwood Bluffs

BEACH WALK INFORMATION
Distance—1-3 miles or more Topo— Dos Pueblos Canyon.

DIRECTIONS
From Santa Barbara drive northbound on Highway 101 to the Glen Annie/Storke Road exit in Goleta. Turn left, cross over the freeway and drive 0.3 miles to Hollister. Turn right and continue 1.7 miles to the Ellwood Bluffs parking lot.

SETTING THE SCENE
When Ellwood Cooper first visited Santa Barbara in 1868 as a tourist, he was impressed by the olive trees which had been planted along Los Olivos by the mission padres. Quickly, he became convinced the oil produced in Santa Barbara's mild Mediterranean climate could compete with that produced in Italy.

By coincidence, Cooper later met Colonel W.W. Hollister in northern California and began corresponding with him. When Hollister moved to the Goleta Valley in 1869 and built his fabulous Glen Annie retreat he began singing the praises of the "Good Land" to Cooper and convinced him to move to the area in 1870.

When he arrived in the Goleta Valley, looking at the property on which he would soon locate his olive trees, Cooper wrote:

"The appearance of the Goleta Valley is perfectly lovely, the prospect grand and sublime, mountains on the one side, the great ocean on the other. The building sites on our ranch cannot be surpassed anywhere. I can have wild ravine views, rugged mountains, the ocean and look all over the country between me and
Santa Barbara 12 miles distant, the west view being of equal beauty."

Cooper, being the industrious person he was, had 400 acres of his canyon holdings (what is now known as Ellwood Canyon) planted with 7,000 olive trees, and 12,500 walnut trees within two years. For many years he was the largest producer of walnuts in California and Cooper's olive mill eventually became the largest in the United States. He was hailed as America's olive oil king, but ironically, the olive oil business which brought him to Santa Barbara ended up being a failure; Cooper could not compete with the cheaper, and inferior, oil being produced in Sicily at a fraction of the cost.

The olive trees are gone, as are the walnut groves; nevertheless Cooper's mark has been left indelibly on the Goleta countryside and in areas like the Ellwood Bluffs County Park. It is he who was responsible for bringing the eucalyptus tree to Santa Barbara. Cooper was the first grower in the United States to begin commercial propagation and distribution of eucalyptus trees. The main plantation was just across from Ellwood Bluffs County Park near Ellwood Union School.

Today, as you walk down through the park you will notice the long rows of eucalyptus lining Hollister Avenue. In places they separate the open fields from one another. It is these that are now the legacy of Ellwood Cooper.

THE WALK
From the Ellwood Bluffs parking lot, the main trail leads through the middle of a long corridor of open grass meadows. This is the first of a series of very lovely fields which you can walk through on your way to the bluffs overlooking a very long and beautiful stretch of the coastline.

On your left you will pass a narrow trail meandering off into a long grove of eucalyptus trees. This is one of a number of trails which lead here and there, in some cases brief detours through lovely forests of the eucalyptus or in other cases, another trail which then connects with another and still another.

After you've walked a few hundred yards from the parking lot and just before crossing the upper end of Devereaux Creek, you will come to a trail intersection. Turning left on the intersecting trail leads along the side of the creek to the Monarch reserve. Continuing ahead will take you directly to the bluff top and a wide trail which leads east along the edge of the cliff for more than a mile.

I like turning right and heading west, perhaps because fewer people go that way. This takes you to the edge of Sandpiper Golf Course where the trail crosses the creek and then follows the side of the golf course out towards the ocean. Once you are at the cliff's edge, an overgrown, but serviceable, trail leads down to the beach. Often, I just meander along the cliffs, stopping here and there to admire the views towards Coal Oil Point, before heading across the meadows to the Monarch reserve. This make one of the most wonderful loops you can do and I never tire of it, especially just after a storm, when the vernal pools are full of water, the clouds puffy and the sunsets perfect.