This Trail is a County of Santa Barbara Designated Landmark
The Chumash peoples of Montecito’s Salaguas village used a narrow path through today’s Romero Canyon to obtain food and to trade with villages along the rivers, potreros, and mountains of the interior. During the American period, years of disuse had allowed nature to reclaim the trail until the late 1850s, when it was recut as a dispatch route to carry mail to Fort Tejon. The route was never used, so rain and neglect once again reduced it to a terrible condition.
The canyon gets its name from the populous Spanish pioneer Romero family living in Montecito. In 1880 and 1891, two of the clan received patents for homesteads in Romero Canyon. The trail up the canyon was used by local residents for hunting and camping excursions into Blue Canyon and the Santa Ynez River area.
After the backcountry became part of the Forest Preserve in 1900, the Cottam and Show families of Montecito each opened guest camps in Blue Canyon, which was reached by the Romero Canyon trail. Tom Dinsmore of Montecito became a ranger and often rode over the Romero trail and into the backcountry to camp, fish, and hunt, in addition to performing forest service work such as planting pines, maintaining trails, and fighting fires.
When Juncal Dam was completed in 1930, the Civilian Conservation Corps bulldozed a road over the mountain to the dam and a network of roads developed in the backcountry. Traversed for many years, the road up the canyon fell into disuse in the late 1960s.
By the early 1970s, Santa Barbara businessman and owner of the old Hildreth/Ogilvy ranch along Mono Creek, James “Jim” Andros, had been traveling the road for many years. At that time, he and two partners purchased 490 acres of Romero Canyon. As time passed, they became concerned that so many of Montecito’s canyons were sprouting houses and development. In 1978, he and his partners (Joseph Zebrosky and Dr. Glen Counihan) sold their land in Romero Canyon to the Trust for Public Land at a great discount. The Trust held it until the Forest Service could purchase it in 1980.
Thanks to the generosity of these three men, Romero Canyon trail remains in a relatively native state. Today the forces of nature, rather than urban development, determine its changing character. (Hattie Beresford)
(Source: The Way It Was: Santa Barbara Comes of Age by Hattie Beresford – Full bibliography on page 180 of the book; 2005 interview with Jim Andros)