Episode 34: The History Of Hope Ranch

Scott: Sweet Home Santa Barbara, where the skies are so blue. Sweet Home Santa Barbara, what's
worked for me can work for you.

Jonathan Robinson: Welcome back, friends, and family. This is Jonathan Robinson. It is Sweet Home
Santa Barbara. I am with my friend and trustee real estate broker.

Scott Williams: Scott Williams.

Jonathan: Good to see you again, Scott. This will be an interesting episode because we are doing the
history of Hope Ranch, which I have been interested in because that is an interesting enclave of Santa
Barbara. What do you know about how this became such a unique area of Santa Barbara?

Scott: Well, the area of Hope Ranch goes all the way back to the Portola Expedition. In 1769, they landed
right there at the bottom of Las Positas, came up the valley and they encountered a two mesh Indian
village, city virtually, that went all the way from the Modoc Road area all the way up to El Sueno,
included parts of Hope Ranch, and that was the first time that the Spanish settlers put or eye on this
particular territory. It actually was given by the Spanish government to some other soldiers who have
been working as soldiers for about 30 or 40 years. And as they say that the commission at the end,
rather than pay them, they gave them 3000 acres of a beautiful chunk of Santa Barbara. And then when
they still hadn't paid them, they gave them another 3000 acres. So one guy, Naraciso Fabrigard got 6000
acres all the way from Las Positas road all the way out to the airport. That was what was given to him as
his pay for 40 years of working for the Spanish.

Jonathan: That'll be a pretty good pay nowadays. So, did it make him rich and happier? Or how'd that
worked out?

Scott: Well, he sold it. It began its journey towards the Hope family that it's named for. He actually sold
to a sea captain named Robins, and then was sold the Hope family. Now, the Hope family acquired it in
1861 and they ran… she bought it. But the civil war had just come along at that point in time and the
cost of wool went through the roof, and the Hope family became quite wealthy from selling wool. The
family hired Sammy Barber, who was the mayor of Santa Barbara back on those days, to build a 13-room
house for the enormous sum of $10,000.

Jonathan: Wow.

Scott: Yeah.

Jonathan: That will now buy you a really nice door in Hope Ranch, maybe.

Scott: Right, absolutely. A door only.

Jonathan: Yes.

Scott: But as the house was being built, Mr. Hope passed away and gave it to his wife, Della, and Della
received as her part of the will, the Hope Ranch, thousands of acres. She got by just fine with that until
the railroad came through. Southern Pacific Railroad built a railroad right pass her doorstep there in the
late 1800s, and they became aware of this big chunk of land and they approached her to buy it and they
paid her $200,000 for several thousand acres.

Jonathan: Wow. Yeah, I know that at some point, it became an area for equestrian stuff. Was that soon
after that? How'd that developed?

Scott: That's true. They built a race track for trotters, as they call them, that's a part of horsing, and the
place has always had a horsy feel to it. Also, in these days after the Southern Pacific Railroad people
took it over, they hired a real estate agent and started to see whether or not they could subdivide it, do
something with it. They wanted to build a hotel there, that did not work out so well for them. Finally,
they sold them off to a development company that planned on creating houses there. However, it was
in a horse and buggy days still, and this is about four miles or three and a half miles out of town, which
was considered so far out of town that nobody would really want to build a house out there. It's too far
away. So it was actually not much of the success in the early 1900s. They farmed it. They went to San
Roque and drilled a horizontal well instead vertical and back into the mountains and got an enormous
amount of water that they used to fill up Laguna Blanca, that lake there right as you come into Hope
Ranch. That's filled with water from San Roque. They farmed and had walnuts and orchids of various
sorts, but it was just too far out of town. It was ahead of its time.

Jonathan: And then finally, it's time became or happened, I guess at some point, they started to build
juristic states there. How did that develop?

Scott: Well, the car came along and changed everything, then three or four miles out of town wasn't so
bad. Some of the big architects of the day, George Washington, Smith and Reginald Johnson started to

build a couple of states out there. That happened about 1925, so 1925 to 1930, they began to build
some biggest states, and of course, then, the big depression came along, and that slowed things down
for a while. But during the 1930s, they brought a lot of things along that were setting the tone for Hope
Ranch was going to go. That included a private beach club, a polo field, tennis courts, skate shooting
facilities. An archery range and about 30 miles of trails for riding your horse. Now that you had a car,
your horse became something you could do for fun.

Jonathan: Was it all treed and beautiful or did somebody help make it that way?

Scott: Well, the people that bought it just started to develop it, but they hired, what is his name? Chase,
Herald Chase as their real estate man, and eventually, they sold they whole project to him to continue
on, and he put a stamp on Hope Ranch for the next 40 years, from the 1920s to the 1960s. This was his
territory. He planted over 50,000 trees and bushes. He really helped tree the place out. He put his
stamp. His stamp is all over Hope Ranch, that's for sure.

Jonathan: Interesting. There's also the big country club there. How'd that happened?

Scott: Chase started it up. That's the La Cumbre Country Club. Your not required to belong to the
country club if you live in Hope Ranch. All the way to central through the social life of Hope Ranch, many
people do live there. This gives an idea of the size of Hope Ranch. It's about 1,853 acres, and there's
about 763 parcels in there, of which about 730 of them have a house on them. So there's only about 30,
35 pieces of land there still to go, so people oftentimes will actually knock down a house because you
can't buy a lot. There's only 30 of them out there still undeveloped. It's easier to buy a house and knock
it down and build another house. That's the size of Hope Ranch, about 2,000 people live there.

Jonathan: Through the 1930s, stuff happened. In the 1940s, on up, what was happening at Hope Ranch?

Scott: Well, yeah, the country club was established in 1933, and around the same time, I suddenly
recalled Hope Ranch annex., which is just outside of the 1,800 acres of Hope Ranch. There's a couple of
hundred acres of homes that are believed acres was established, and they actually participated and won
a national price for better homes in America coming from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine, and
each lot was about half an acre, had 35 fruit trees on it, and the papers at the time and the magazine
just thought that was wonderful. You can have half an acre with 35 fruit trees on it like paradise. It was
considered the best place to live in America that year.

Jonathan: Moving on up with how was Hope Ranch changed or how did it become what it is today?

Scott: Well, that's a wonderful place that the Hope family built. It fell on hard times. It's on Via Tranquia,
and it's actually just outside Hope Ranch. It's the corner house outside of Hope Ranch. In 1962, they
moved out of the house and the management of Hope Ranch moved it into the money boots facility and
further Via Tranquia in the ranch there. A few years later, the house, 1967, was sold to the O'brien
family. The O'briens restored it. It was really down on its lock, and occasionally they open it still for
people to have events there, charity, fundraising. The family O'brien still owns it today.

Jonathan: Yeah, you mentioned this guy Chase who really stored a lot of the places. When he died what
happened to things…

Scott: Well, just before he died, he sold it to Howard Vesley, and Howard Vesley, unfortunately, had a
car accident and also passed away. The very last parcels of land were distributed out of his state and
were sold to individuals. By the 1960s, all of the parcels had been put out to private parties at that point.
There's no more any original sales from Chase or Vesley at that point.

Jonathan: In recent times, it's obviously high-end real estate. What can you say about how it's changed
in the last 20 years, or what did you notice nowadays?

Scott: It's always been a place that's friendly to horses, but currently as of this minute, it's not quite as
horsy as it used to be. Right now, one of about every 12 owners has a horse in there, so there's 5,000
horses in Hope Ranch that individuals have, and there's still those 30 acres of trails. It's still very much a
part of the feeling for the place. It's rural in feeling. It's smaller than Montecito. Montecito is about
3,500 parcels, and this is little less that 800 parcels. So it's only about 25% of the size of Montecito or
other most high-end neighborhood. It does have its own water system, all those beautiful wells up in the
mountains there, and then they have their own wells in the Hope Ranch so they have lots of water, La
Cumbre Mutual Water Company, and then they managed all of the streets. There's 25 miles of roads. All
these things are managed. There's a cost of around $1,300 a year per parcel. It's not terribly amount of
money, and you get access to the private beaches there, not the La Cumbre Country Club but the beach
club and the tennis courts and those things. There is a private K-12 school in the Laguna Blanca that Mr.
Chase gave the polo fields and the land that the school is on. He gave it to them as a gift so they own
their place there. That will probably continue to always be there.

Jonathan: If I'm interested in buying a house or two in Hope Ranch, I would imagine I have to empty my
piggy bank at least.

Scott: Yeah. The so-called average house in Monecito right now… not Monecito, in Hope Ranch, same
too with Montecito is about $5 million right now. It's quite hard to buy one for under $3 million. The
largest single parcels are in the 50-acre range and they're quite a bit more than that.

Jonathan: I would imagine they bring in some good money.

Scott: Yeah.

Jonathan: Any last words about Hope Ranch? I love fascinating stuff and I appreciate the history. It's
really interesting. But any last thing to make?

Scott: Well, it's one of those things that I can think of, from 1937 to 1962, the Dog Show for America was
held out there in the area where the La Cumbre Country Club, that's around Laguna Blanca Lake. That
was a very long run with that. And then they had lots of horse events there, steeplechases and that sort
of things. The are of course, riding trails are beautiful for people there. They do guard their privacy. It's a
suburban-rural place but it's not part of the city of Santa Barbara. They probably will never want to join
the city of Santa Barbara. It's really quite independent as its own group and they run their own show
there.

Jonathan: I used to work out in Hope Ranch. You probably don't know that, Scott.

Scott: No, I don't.

Jonathan: [inaudible] for the head of the McMan's furniture doors. In my college days, it was fun to
head out there and just be in a beautiful place.

Scott: Yeah, it continues to be. There's some famous people we won't name-drop that lived there, and
it's a delightful place to call home.

Jonathan: Well, thank you. If people want to know more about Hope Ranch, what you do in selling real
estate all over the area, how might they get in contact with you?

Scott: It's scottwilliams.com will be a good way to reach me.

Jonathan: Okay. I look forward to knowing more history about the Santa Barbara area. It's always very
fascinating. Thank you for listening to Sweet Home Santa Barbara.

Scott: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite app. If you know
someone preparing to sell their home, please tell them about the podcast. Visit scottwilliams.com to
contact me and download the two free ebook clips, " Is My House Saleable Now?" and " How Not to Buy Money Pit?" Thank you for listening.