Montecito

In 1875, William Eddy, a Nevada silver miner, founded the Santa Barbara County National Bank. A year later, Josiah Doulton of the chinaware family bought 20 ocean front acres that he named “Ocean View.” When hard times fell, his wife took in boarders. The name for the popular site was changed to the Spanish, “Miramar” and later became the hotel of the same name. The hotel is presently being rebuilt. In 1927, the adjacent Biltmore Hotel was built.

A small American village took root around the Buell country store, now the Upper Village. In 1869, Protestant Church, All-Saints-By-The-Sea Episcopal opened, followed in 1886 by El Montecito Presbyterian Church.

In 1887, the Southern Pacific coastal route stopped in Montecito, later replaced by a stop in Santa Barbara and the post office, which also migrated to its bigger neighbor to the west. That same year, San Francisco banker William Crocker and his mother-in-law Caroline Sperry bought Rancho Las Fuentes “the fountains,” so called because of its springs and ponds, south of East Valley Road. He planted citrus and built a large lemon packing plant.

Brothers George and Fred Gould planted olive groves along a “trail to the beach,” now renamed Olive Mill Road. They later built a stone olive mill in 1893. The mill is now a residence at 200 Olive Mill Road.

With the advent of the train, Santa Barbara’s fame as a fashionable health resort grew, especially after the opening of the opulent Potter Hotel in 1902. From the 1890’s onward, the influx of wealth prompted luxury estates. These ultra-rich included such names as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Fleischmann, DuPont, Swift, McCormick and Bliss. This “migration of millionaires” carved out fabulous estates ranging from 30-200 acres of the Old Spanish Town.

Working-class also came to serve the wealthy and they settled into Old Spanish Town building dance halls, cantina, tavern, brothel and food store. Yet in 1914, many of these buildings were destroyed in the disastrous flood. Some exist today along East Valley Road.

In 1897, Middle-class Americans built a recreation center, Montecito Hall, and in 1908 built the Montecito Home Club. “The Peppers,” a popular elite social club at 430 Hot Springs Road, was built in about 1900. Its stage played host to Paderewski’s piano playing, the singing of Madame Schumann-Heink and the world debut of Santa Barbara dancer Martha Graham.

Sports followed class lines with workers preferring sandlot baseball or croquet and the more aristocratic tending to tennis, golf and polo. The Santa Barbara Country Club was laid out in 1894 between the Biltmore location and the Santa Barbara Cemetery. Moved inland in 1907, it became the Montecito Country Club. The former clubhouse was converted into a sumptuous personal residence – Miraflores. A later owner donated it to the Music Academy of the West. In 1928, country club members, including Max Fleischmann, left to form the Valley Club of Montecito on land south of East Valley Road on either side of Sheffield Drive.

Then, in 1968, Birnam Wood Country Club followed on the former Crocker-Sperry ranch. The old lemon packing plant was converted into the elegant clubhouse and became the center of Montecito social life. Tennis, also favored by the fashionable crowd, was centered at the Willis Knowles’ estate, now the Knollwood Tennis Club at 1675 East Valley Road.

In 1916, a 34-acre polo facility with grandstands, stables and a mission-styled luxury clubhouse went up on Middle Road. Polo declined with the onset of the depression, but the clubhouse was remodeled into a residence at 184 Middle Road.